Debugging fast
For fixing bugs in production, and being a wizard to co-workers.
Define the symptoms
First find out what is going wrong, and any symptoms you can find. Include everything you can find, write them down if neccessary.
What has changed?
If applicable you want to think about your previous working state.
Define the search scope
The second step is to find out where the error is coming from. As an example, if users aren't seeing their data you could map up that the possibilites are the following:
Then you start doing a binary search through the possibilities. You might start by checking the API using an API Key from the Swagger UI docs. If you're able to access data, it means you can rule out the DB being down and the credentials being wrong. You might then try to emulate their auth and continue debugging like this.
Faster iterations
The faster you can execute this search algorithm the faster you will conclude what the error is.
Binary search applications in life
Bineary search can also be applied to other aspects of your life.