Debugging

Debugging my Life

What is debugging?

Debugging is a term commonly used by programmers and developers to describe the act of looking for errors in code and correct them. By doing so, they are removing “bugs”, or errors from their app.

Where did it come from and why?

Bugs have been used as the term since the first case originated from a real-life insect. A moth lodged in the machine’s hardware was discovered by engineers working on Harvard University’s Mark II Aiken Relay Calculator in 1947.

The engineers have settled on calling this error a “bug” after literally finding one causing an issue in their machine, and named the process of troubleshooting such errors as “debugging”.

My Debugging Experience

My class took a break for a day on writing new code, and our instructor taught us to “debug” code. We were to look for errors in given code snippets, correct them, and explain the process. And it was more than the code itself.

In Visual Studio Code, a "Run and Debug" feature has been added to the editor. This feature allows for running a file and squashing bugs out of the way. I never really knew this would’ve come in handy. But it truly did, and that’s what we used for the day’s lesson.

The Debugging Process

We were given some code snippets in a Google doc. We were to paste each of them one at a time into the ediotr, and then run the debugger. We learned about breakpoints, which is a set point that the debugger will stop at. Since we were coding in Python, we used the Python debugger in particular for this assignment.

Python Debugger: Debug Python File was our run option. We would run that and see all the variables tha have been ran on the side bar. We would understand the results after a certain number of iterations and what happens if we changed them.

We would also find more detailed error messages for things that didn’t run correctly. Though we didn’t understand the exact jargon, we were able to figure out what went wrong. Then we would easily get rid of that pesky bug. The debugger is an easy way for good riddance.

Can you “Debug” you Life?

Your life isn’t a computer or a program, however, similar to how debugging, there is a way you can. What I’ve found out was that not everything will turn out perfectly on the first try. It takes multiple attempts and reviews to perfect any experience.

When you try something, it won’t work flawlessly at first. You have to get used to the antics and find out what went wrong. Once you do so, understand why it happened and mitigate that issue. It will be better than it was before. Many things are based on trial and error. It’s a great way of understanding issues.

If you move on to a more advanced step, consider all of the problem-solving methods you have used in previous encounters, and the first try later will be even better than the very first time.