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Congratulations! You are one of the few who realise that over 80% of errors are simple and easy to fix. It is important to realise this as it can save a lot of time. Time that could be wasted making unnecessary changes, that in turn can cause further problems.
Programming is a humbling experience. An experience that causes one to reflect on human error. One major cause of these errors is syntax, syntax, syntax. We tend not to notice when we have made a typo. It is too easy to spend an hour trying to fix a problem that was caused by a typo. Accepting human error, that you made a mistake, is a reasonable first assumption.
Another important assumption to fixing problems is Occam's razor - the simpliest explanation is more often than not the best. When we initially expect a simple error we don't try to over complicate things and we are more likely to use basic techniques to trap the error; we use simple debugging procedures.
Sometimes just writing a message is enough to see what is going on. One easy technique is to trap the error in a try catch block and write the error message. Its surprizing how often this simple technique is not used.
In asp.net there is a custom errors mode remoteonly. What this does is display the exception only on the local server, but anywhere else. Other users of your application may be directed to a customized error page, while you figure out what's going on.
A very important step to avoiding errors in your application is testing. This is best done on a separate machine to the development and production servers. Even if you don't have access to a test environment this is no reason not to test. We developers are not the best testers. Get someone else or preferably a group to test, believe me you'll save time and probably money.
One of the most common errors is the 'object reference not set to an instance of an object'. Null reference errors are common too. Something, a reference or a parameter for example, is missing. So check the page references and parameters. Look in that error line to see what may be missing or null. Write any values that may be null.
A simple thing that you can do is continue to practice. Programming in an unfamiliar language is slow to start with, but experience is cumulative. As you get more practice, things like error handling become easier. It doesn't become easier if you just copy & paste all the time, there is no substitute for understanding what's going on.
There are many debugging techniques, but that is not the point of this article. Its not until I started to appreciate the number of my errors and the simplicity of fixing them, that I really started to make progress. At times I am still guilty of skipping the diagnosis and heading straight for the medicine cupboard. This has almost always been a mistake.
I hope that you avoid some of the frustrations that I have had over the years by not ignoring human error and accepting how simple steps can resolve most problems.
Happy programming!
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