It is tempting to treat every bug as a code defect with a narrow fix.
But recurring issues usually tell a bigger story.
Some bugs survive because ownership is fuzzy. Some because the setup is too fragile. Some because the product leaves too much room for interpretation. And some because the people closest to the problem are not part of the feedback loop early enough.
In those cases, fixing a line of code solves the symptom while leaving the system untouched.
The more useful question is not only “what broke?” It is “what made this kind of breakage likely?”
That shift changes the quality of the fix. Instead of patching a single outcome, you improve the conditions around it: defaults, checks, messaging, handoff, documentation, or the sequence in which a workflow unfolds.
Good engineering often means fixing the code. Better product work means noticing when the code is only the visible part of the problem.