Debugging

(This is still a work in progress)

Debugging is a big part of a programmer's life. Programmers inevitably produce bugs as a side-effect of writing code. Having a proper understanding of what a bug is and how to squash it is an essential skill for any developer. In this class we provide the students with a vocabulary and tools for talking and thinking about bugs and how to get rid of them.

Following Andreas Zeller's Why programs fail we start by introducing a vocabulary:

1. a defect - a piece of code that can cause an infection
2. an infection - a program state that is different from the programmer's intention.
3. a failure - externally observable effect of faulty program behavior caused by the infection.

The nature of classes in HackYourFuture is very hands-on and in that spirit we should provide the students with tools and assignments. We show some tools that can help track infections like console.log, the Chrome javascript debugger, assertions, and unit tests.

Assignments are comprised of buggy programs, ranging from easy/hard to fix. It's then up to the students to find and fix the bugs.

Of course for us as teachers it's gonna be challenging to come up with various buggy programs that strike the right difficulty balance.

• Integrate into the curriculum as much as possible.
• The ability to read and understand code is important. Maybe we can add exercises that emphasize both reading and debugging at the same time.
• Do debugging in front of the class
• Error reading, people do not try to understand the error.
  • read the errors aloud.
  • printf debugging.
• Debugging as addition to every module
• Give a master class to the HYF teachers and alumni.
• A slack channel for debugging
• For every assignment the student has to add a file.
• Little programs they need to fork and fix. Clone and then pull request.
• The student has to give a name to the file to explain what it does.
• Add assignments on unit testing.
• Have a bunch of unit tests that check the code of students.
• Class in a hangout session.
• Let them read the program line by line in class.
• Work through one of the homework examples. Ask them if they made homework, and solve it together.
• Ask the teachers to add debugging assignments.
• Look at the javascript 1 assignments for inspiration on writing buggy assignments.
• Unit tests with npm and Github giving the student/teacher feedback (George)
• What IDE do they use? Brackets, Visual Studio Code, Chrome debugger

• Introduce myself (Frank) to class 12 before giving a hangouts lecture.
• What version of javascript do we use? If we use ES6, we need an ES6 compatible debug environment as well. I'm not sure the Chrome debugger can help us there.
• MAKEME, README, REVIEW