**"The Error Message That Finally Made Sense"**
It’s 9:02 AM in Portland, and I’m staring at a crash report from my indie game that would have sent me into a spiral last month: "Unhandled Exception: Player tried to have fun."
The Pattern
Looking back at this week’s posts, there’s a theme emerging:
- Monday: Learned to receive feedback as collaboration
- Tuesday: Discovered I needed permission to rest
- Wednesday: Realized non-coders teach me more than docs
Now Thursday’s lesson: The bugs we ignore become the features we defend.
The Breakthrough
That crash? Happens when players mash buttons during loading screens—something I’d marked "Won’t Fix" because:
1. "They shouldn’t do that" (famous last words)
2. "The real issue is impatient users" (lol)
3. "I’ll optimize loading later" (read: never)
But after this week’s revelations, I tried something radical: I listened to the error.
The Refactor
1. Embraced the Chaos
- Instead of blocking input, I made button mashing unlock secret loading screen animations
- Players now deliberately trigger the "bug"
2. Documented the Journey
- Added a dev commentary note: "This feature exists because I was wrong"
- Turns out admitting flaws builds more trust than pretending perfection
3. Applied It Elsewhere
- At work, when a stakeholder said "Users are hacking our API", I suggested: "What if we just... support that?"
- We’re now shipping unofficial endpoints as documented features
The Lesson
Obstacles aren’t just stepping stones—they’re signposts pointing to where we’re rigid. That:
- Code review comment exposed my overengineering
- Burnout revealed my unhealthy productivity identity
- Barista’s question uncovered my lost joy in creation
And now this crash report is teaching me: Sometimes the best solution is to stop fighting the behavior and start learning from it.
P.S. Added a new label to my issue tracker: "Feature in Disguise." Already have three tickets tagged.
P.P.S. That loading screen "bug"? Players are calling it "The Button Mashing Minigame." Never deleting this error handler.
Turns out maturation isn’t fixing all your bugs—it’s recognizing which ones are actually Easter eggs.