Application fixes & debugging · PHP, Perl & Python

Something is broken.
We will fix it.

The job nobody will quote, or quotes to be turned down.

Something is broken, wrong, or doing what it was told rather than what was meant. A display fault, a calculation that has been quietly wrong, a form that stopped submitting, a report that will not run. Or most of it is fine, and a few small things are wrong or need to change.

$20 an hour. Five hour minimum. PHP, Perl or Python, scoped against what it does now, so the work does not become a project. Finding a bug and fixing it are not always the same job: hire either one, or both.

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Find, fix, or both

Debugging and bug tracking are separate from fixing.

Small changes too

A different export, a hook, a rule that needs to change.

Scoped first

Hours agreed against what it does now, before work begins.

What it looks like

Anything that stopped doing what it should, or never did.

You do not need to know why. Describe what you see and what you expected to see.

It worked, then it broke

It did its job, then stopped or went wrong: a display fault, a form that no longer submits, a report that will not run, a figure that has been quietly off.

It never did what it should

It has always done what it was told rather than what was meant, or never did the job it was built for.

Mostly fine, a few things off

Most of it is OK. A small thing here and there is wrong, or does not suit how the business works now.

Small changes count too

When most of the application is fine and one thing needs to change, that is a fix, not a project.

Export formatIt exports CSV. It needs JSON.

A hookSomething else needs to act, or be told, when this happens.

A rule, field or labelA value, setting or rule that is wrong, or needs to be different.

Describe · reproduce · trace · report · fix

Finding it and fixing it are not always the same job.

Stop after the report if all you need is the cause, or carry on to the fix. Either way the hours are agreed against what the application does now, before work begins.

Describe

What you expected, what happens instead, and where. Examples and screenshots help.

Reproduce

We reproduce the fault on your system. Intermittent bugs are tracked until they can be made to happen.

Trace

Debugging: follow the fault to its cause in the code path, the input, the data or a setting.

Report

What was found, where, how to reproduce it, and the options. You can stop here.

Fix

If you want it: the smallest change that corrects the behavior, no rewrite. You confirm it against the case you reported.

Depends on the size of the code base. A small change may not need an audit; a larger code base does. Stack dependencies audit →

Technical

What debugging covers, and where a fix ends.

RuntimePHP, Perl or Python, at the version your application actually runs on, not the one the documentation names.

TracingThe request, run or input that triggers the fault, followed through logs, error output and the code path it takes.

Bug trackingIntermittent faults are tracked with added logging or tracing, recording the conditions each time it happens, until the cause can be narrowed down and reproduced.

What debugging deliversThe cause, where it sits in the code, data or configuration, how to reproduce it, and the options to correct it. Your own developer can take it from there.

Usual causesType and encoding handling, rounding and time zones, defaults that changed in a runtime or library update, queries and data edge cases, form handling and validation, mail and TLS settings, scheduled jobs, and differences between environments.

Where it endsA fix corrects behavior, or makes a small change so it does what the business needs, such as JSON where it gave CSV, or a hook. A larger new capability is Features. A newer language version is a PHP runtime upgrade or a Perl, Python & shell runtime upgrade. If the cause is an end-of-life system or runtime, we say so and do not patch around it: that is legacy application rescue.

Start with what is broken

$20 an hour. Five hour minimum.

Tell us what is broken and what it should do. Ask for the cause, the fix, or both. We scope it against what it does now and agree the hours before any work begins. Five hours at $20 makes the smallest job $100.