8 técnicas de depuração

8 debugging techniques

It is impossible to completely guarantee that a product is error-free, but debugging goes a long way in minimizing the occurrence of these defects.

Depuração de software

A debugger, also known as a debug tool or debug mode, can be used to easily identify and fix bugs. To take advantage of the tool effectively, you will need to run your program inside the debugger, which allows you to monitor it in real time and see the error when it occurs. You can pause the program while it is running to identify and investigate any problems that are occurring and review your code line by line.

Typically, you will use a debugger after encountering an exception. With the tool, you can identify the problem that is occurring.

4. Record everything

Make sure you are logging each problem you encounter as well as the steps you take to resolve them and ensure your program is working correctly. Once you've documented the error, you can start mapping out possible scenarios and solutions. You must keep track of all possible steps to be taken and the information needed to make a decision about your errors. This will also allow you to browse different potential solutions.

5. Locate the problem

The troubleshooting method involves removing pieces of code line by line until you find the problem that is interfering with your program. Although this is a rather painstaking and complicated way of identifying what error is occurring, it can be highly effective in determining what exactly is wrong with your product. Of course, you will need to repeat the process until you find the bugs.

6. Try to replicate the problem

By replicating the problem, you will discover what exactly the nature of the problem is. In fact, it can lead you to create better, cleaner code overall, as you're exercising the critical thinking skills needed to find the cause of a problem.

This, of course, requires a thorough investigation of the product details. But once you've successfully reproduced the error that's interfering with your product's performance, usability, or functionality, fixing the problem will take much less time. In fact, most of the time, replicating the problem is hard work, while solving it only takes a few minutes.

You might turn to these solutions because a customer comes to you with a problem and to fix it you'll need to reproduce it, or as a debugging technique to have in your arsenal when developing products from scratch.

7. Turn to the community

It is highly likely that any error you encounter is an error that others have encountered before you. It can be very helpful to turn to a community associated with the language, framework, or other development tool you are using to find a solution to resolve the bug you encounter. Many development tools such as languages ​​like Python and frameworks like Ruby on Rails have huge, thriving communities, offering extensive support to the developers within them.

8. Test, test and test again

The best way to detect bugs – and successfully resolve them before they derail your app – is to test your product repeatedly. Although the QA team takes a closer look at the product, developers themselves can create simple test scripts during the development phase, such as unit testing, which involves individually testing different parts of the code – units.

These are some of the many simple debugging techniques you should have in your toolkit to build and refine software and ultimately create better products. Different methods will make more sense depending on the specific problems and scenarios you encounter, but it's a good idea to familiarize yourself with them all to have more tools at your disposal and improve your development skills.

Source: BairesDev

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