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When “When” is better than “if”
When “When” is better than “if”

When “When” is better than “if”

ORIGINAL:

You’ve rolled out an application and it produces mysterious, sporadic errors? That’s pretty common, even if fairly well-tested applications are exposed to real-world data. How can you track down when and where exactly your problem occurs? What kind of user data is it caused by? A debugger won’t help you there.

BETTER:

You’ve rolled out an application and it produces mysterious, sporadic errors. That’s pretty common, even when a fairly well-tested application is exposed to real-world data. How can you track down when and where exactly your problems occur? What kind of user data is it caused by? A debugger won’t help you there.

EXPLANATION:

When an occurrence of a particular event or circumstances is likely to happen, the word “when” can be better than “if”. The passage is also improved by using a singular noun “application” in the second so that it is consistence with the first sentence.

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