Hey, I found a bug in WordPress! What happens next?
The first – and often irresistible – reaction is to write a patch. But proposed fixes are almost always inadequate without a complete understanding of when the bug was introduced and why the code was originally written the way it was.
In this talk, I’ll discuss the importance of a historical sensibility when fixing bugs, and I’ll demonstrate some of the technical tools that I use to dig through a project’s history to develop this sensibility. My focus will be on WordPress core, but the ideas and techniques discussed can be applied to any complex software project.