As I get more and more into my job I've had a lot of opportunity to code new projects from scratch. Almost every programmer I know really appreciates that opportunity.
But the further I go into it, the more I enjoy bug fixing. In fact, if I can spend a whole day looking over code, whether it be mine or someone else's code, and find some obscure bug, I feel much more accomplished than when I create code. Does anyone else feel this way, and are there any job advantages to this?
At my last job, we had a candidate apply for a position that was exactly the same way. We hired her and she worked out famously doing exactly that. I think an effective development team needs to have a nice mix of people who prefer doing different things: Back Office dev, UI, Database, Bug Fixing, etc...
You're a sick individual. Seek help immediately. :-) Seriously, you might want to look at a job in QA/maintenance, though, I don't know if that would be consider advantageous to your career.
That's interesting. I am the opposite way -- love to design and make things from scratch, working with other people.
I think it's great that some people like some things, and others like other things. The trick for a company is to hire people for the jobs that they really enjoy doing. So the job advantages to you is that other people don't enjoy those kinds of tasks as much as you do. You have less competition.
I can certainly relate. I think with me it is because I am never quite satisfied with my own code or design choices. Also because I started out in QA I never ever trust any code to work, certainly not mine.
I think TDD works very well with me when designing software, because once a test method has been created it shows that there is a "bug" and I'll need to fix it.
It's said that a plenty of developers spend around 50% of their time debugging instead of coding new stuff, that's why debugging skills are actually so important and you should code thinking that eventually you'll have to debug your own code, it's nice to see you enjoy it... but that's something I personally don't share with you =)
Personally the longest and more frustrating hours I have spent in front of a computer have been debugging, it MAY be fun when you're are working with your own code or somebody's else code that has been nicely created (well documented, properly formatted, etc.). Just as Bryan mentioned, in a certain way, you have a tester's spirit =)