CIS 2250 Lecture 3: Debugging and Problem Solving

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Computing and Information Science
• Course: CIS 2250
• Professor: Andrew Hamilton-Wright

Document Summary

Debugging has two parts: identifying the cause of a software or system error, identifying the best way to correct the problem. Identify a problem or potential bug: make sure that you know what the real problem is run tests, look at logs, run a profiler or debugger, etc. An hour in the library can save a week in the lab have you looked at your debugging diary and reviewed relevant documentation and revision logs: print statements. Do not go looking through the code blindly have a plan your best debugging tool is your brain! Design experiments and test the hypothesis: change one thing at a time and then run the same tests that you ran to test the problem. Analyze the results and formulate a solution. Experienced programmers find errors much more quickly than inexperienced programmers. Its name should be devoted to its function.