Debugging Mindset

What you'll learn
Recognize the different terms used to describe software problems.
Recognize the different activities involved in software debugging.
Navigate control and data dependency trees.
Use delta debugging technique to minimize the debugging search space.
Compare the failing and successful runs to help with debugging.
Examine the internal state of a program in order to locate the root cause of a problem.
Requirements
Some experience in programing would help appreciate the concepts and ideas covered in the course.
Description
Debugging is the most expensive task in the SDLC. More specifically, the fault localization (i.e., locating the root cause of the problem) step is the real bottleneck in the entire process.
There are several attempts in academia to address this problem using automation techniques with relative success in experimental settings and for specific circumstances.
However, in reality, every bug is a case on its own, and there’s no single automated debugging technique that can be applicable to every situation.
This course introduces useful concepts that help create a mindset that software developers can use to deal with difficult bugs.
Section 1: Introduction
What is a bug? (YouTube Video)
In this lecture you'll learn about the different terms that describe computer problems as well as the story of using the term "bug" to describe them.
Activities involved in software debugging
This lecture describes the activities needed for a proper debugging process.
Section 2: Useful Techniques
This section provides a description of a set of useful techniques that you can use for debugging, including navigating the dependency trees, delta debugging and comparisons.
Section 3: Common Debugging Tools
This section describes a set of tools available in most IDEs
Section 4: Code examination process
This section describes a process to follow while examining the code during fault localization.
Section 5: Debugging Demos
In this section you'll see examples of using the concepts described in the course to debug real programs.
Who this course is for:
Software developers fed up with wasting time and energy on inefficient debugging.

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