What does "rabbit hole" mean in programming?
rabbit hole is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
A situation where you start investigating one thing and get progressively pulled into deeper, often tangential problems. Rabbit holes are a risk in debugging and research: what starts as a quick look becomes hours of investigation into something that may not solve the original problem.
Example
"I went down a rabbit hole debugging that CSS issue and lost three hours — I should have timebox'd the investigation."
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