The Office Observes Temporary Debug Log

The log statement was added on a Tuesday.

Its purpose was specific: a particular behavior was occurring in production that could not be reproduced locally, and the log statement was added to capture the internal state at the moment the behavior occurred. The comment above it said: // TODO: remove after debugging. This is standard practice.

The behavior was captured. The issue was identified. The fix was deployed. The log statement was not removed.

The Observation

The comment says: // TODO: remove after debugging. The commit date: November 14th. The current date: January. The issue it was added to debug: resolved November 16th.

The log statement has been writing to production for seven weeks past its purpose. It is logging at INFO level, which means it appears in every request log alongside actual informational content. It is not harmful. It is not useful. It is outputting data that nobody is reading about a condition that no longer needs monitoring.

The statement was not removed on November 16th because removing it was a second action when the fix was the primary action, and deploying two changes simultaneously felt like mixing concerns. The statement was not removed in the following days because it had stopped being visible.

The Life Cycle

Temporary things that work become permanent through a specific sequence. First, they are created with awareness of their temporary nature. Second, they perform their function. Third, the reason for removing them loses urgency. Fourth, they continue to be present without being noticed. Fifth, they are noticed only when someone looks at the code for a different reason and encounters them.

At the fifth stage, they are usually left in place unless the new reason involves the area of the code they occupy, in which case they are removed as a secondary action.

The Current Status

The log statement is in an area of the code that is being reviewed today for a different reason. The TODO comment has been noticed. The log statement will be removed in this commit.

It took seven weeks and an unrelated reason. This is the standard removal timeline for temporary debug logs. The comment that says temporary survives until coincidence creates the opportunity. The log will be gone by end of day.

A new issue will arise next month. A new temporary log statement will be added.