Right, Spencer Ashley. That name rings a bell, actually. It takes me back to a time, maybe a few years ago, when things were a bit chaotic on a project I was messing around with.
I remember digging through some old project files, trying to figure out who was responsible for a specific module. It wasn’t documented well, you know how it is. Just a mess of notes and half-finished code. Someone, somewhere, had scribbled ‘Check with Spencer Ashley’ on a printout I found buried under a stack of manuals.
So, my first step was obvious, right? I started asking around. Nobody knew a Spencer Ashley. I went through the company directory, checked old email lists, even poked around on the internal network drive hoping for a clue. Nothing. It was like chasing a ghost.
I spent a good chunk of the morning on this wild goose chase. Just trying to find this person. My thinking was, maybe they were a contractor? Or someone who left years ago? I pulled up old project rosters, looking for similar names, maybe a typo. Still blank.
Then I shifted gears. Forget the person, maybe it was a codename? Or a reference to something else? I started searching the codebase itself for ‘spencer’ or ‘ashley’. Found a few comments, totally unrelated. It was getting frustrating.
The Actual Problem
Eventually, I gave up on the name. I had to. The real task was figuring out that module. So, I changed my approach completely. I decided to just dive into the code myself, piece by piece.
- First, I mapped out the inputs and outputs. What data was it taking in? What was it spitting out?
- Then, I started tracing the logic, step-by-step. Lots of debugging statements, lots of running it with sample data.
- I documented everything I found as I went. Made my own notes, much clearer than what I found before.
Took me the rest of the day and part of the next, but I finally got a handle on it. Understood how it worked, what its quirks were. Made the changes that were needed. Basically, I did the work the original note was probably trying to shortcut.
Never did find out who Spencer Ashley was. Maybe it was an inside joke, or maybe just a random name someone jotted down. The whole experience taught me something though: sometimes chasing down obscure references is a waste of time. You just gotta roll up your sleeves and tackle the problem head-on, figure it out yourself. It’s often faster in the end, even if it feels harder at the start.
