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    +1 for having them explain their code to you. Not 10 minutes ago I helped a coworker solve a very frustrating problem this way. He'd been beating his head against a memory corruption issue all day. He knew it had to be somewhere in the call stack, but he'd been through the whole thing and couldn't find it. So I told him to walk up the stack with me. A few minutes in, as he was explaining what was going on, he looked at one line and said "hey, wait a second..." and there was his problem as plain as day. But he never noticed it until he had to analyze it with someone else sitting there. Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 1:00
  • @Mason Wheeler: Ensuring they learn the answer, rather than just receiving it amounts to a "give a man a fish..." argument, very worthwhile. Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 2:27
  • +1 For the last sentence, exceptionally true. Usually the highest stage of understanding: 0) Don't understand it, 1) Understand it basically, 2) Under it well, 3) Could explain it to another. Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 2:28
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    See Rubber Duck Debugging, you don't even need another person. Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 3:30
  • @Mason, age old trick. We call it "Grandmothering" here. Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 16:17