Comment by PaulHoule

The worst cases in debugging are the ones where the mental model behind the code is wrong and, in those cases, "throw it away" is the way out.

Those cases are highly seductive because the code seems to work 98% and you'd think it is another 2% to get it working but you never get to the end of the 2%, it is like pushing a bubble around under a rug. (Many of today's LLM enthusiasts will, after they "pay their dues", will wind up sounding like me)

This is documented in https://www.amazon.com/Friends-High-Places-W-Livingston/dp/0... and takes its worst form when you've got an improperly designed database that has been in production for some time and cannot be 100% correctly migrated to a correct database structure.