Debug your Debugging Process
👩🏽💻🔍🐞
Cecelia Martinez
Community Lead, Replay.io
Women Who Code Front End Lead Volunteer
@ceceliacreates
Developers spend up to half their time debugging and maintaining software.
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@ceceliacreates
You need a process to debug effectively and efficiently.
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With a process, debugging can be a fun learning experience.
(Really!)
Debugging Process
- Reproduce the issue
- Identify expected behavior
- Define the problem
- Isolate the issue
- Trace the root cause
- Identify potential solutions
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Reproduce the issue
Recreate the issue in a debugging environment
- Use a debugging recorder like Replay
- Run version of codebase with bug locally
- Create a minimal reproducible example using a code playground/sandbox
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Identify expected behavior
What is the application supposed to do instead?
- A bug is a coding error
- UX issues or product requests are not bugs
- What is the process when it works?
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Define the problem
What are we trying to fix?
- How does the bug deviate from expected behavior?
- Expected behavior: App validates credit card # is 16 digits before processing
- Actual behavior: App tries to process credit card # with less than 16 digits and payment processor fails
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Isolate the issue
Where does the problem occur?
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⁉️
Isolate the issue
Where does the problem occur?
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- Error message call stack
- What lines of code executed
- Validate working code
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Trace the root cause
Follow the code to the bug source
- Validate code functionality at each step
- Examine parameter values and types
- Examine return values
- Examine control flow logic
- Identify when bug deviates from expectations
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Identify potential solutions
Where do we go from here?
- Scope of the bug
- Areas of the codebase impacted by changes
- Larger underlying issues
- Opportunity for improvement
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