Debugging Like A Pro 

My first learning of the software industry, "you should know what you are expecting to get before hitting the run button. If you are debugging without knowing the outcome then you are wasting the time." It becomes important when you write new code. I have seen people write the code and validate the outcome by hitting the button. 2nd learning, "Eliminate the possibility, especially in the prod where it is hard to debug the issue." 3rd learning "Take a break" if nothing works, then collaborate (this I always choose as the last option as everyone's time is precious.)

Worst case scenario if it only works on your machine, ship the machine to the customer. Bug fixed!

I solve more bugs with the imaginary mentor than with actual help, since I often use imaginary help first, and seek help if that doesn't help. Sleeping over it also helps me a lot, however, a coffee break doesn't help me. It's amazing how much you can solve, when you stop trying.

If we could debug efficiently we can write code faster. bugs/errors are basically a obstacle in a road were your cargo truck is gonna have go through, the faster we fix it, the faster we reach our destination

One of the best channels on System Design. Many thanks for your excellent work!

1. Obtain as much information as possible to reproduce the problem 2. Use Print statement to construct a timeline 3. Comb through all the logs for clues 4. Take a break

I personally love using graphviz dot for debugging graph-structured data/tasks. The syntax is so simple you can quickly write methods for auto-generating dot code from the current state of the program, then you write that in a file and one command later you have a nicely laid out visualization. It often shows you at a glance what's wrong while finding the same issue with printing out data would be frustrating and more time consuming.

If you are using visual studio, it can be really helpful to set break points and then look at variable values. Go line by line to see what is happening, how variables change, the current call stack

This is really good, but I wish you'd delve more into breakpoints and introspection tools, either language specific ones or strace/gdb/etc - perhaps for a future video?

Thank you so much for this video. Super helpful and well-presented. Your time and effort is most appreciated!

🥇 This was like friendly advice from Dad, but with excellent graphics and animation! Thank you! 😎✌️

雖然大學第一學期就有OOP和FP的必修 但一直沒有真正理解FP的目的 感謝！

Don't forget to also add instrumentation to your app when possible. A lot of time will be saved when debugging a properly instrumented system, because there is no need to add all those logs and wait for the customer to trigger the bug again. You can prove your theory by looking at the function calls.

I just recently arrived in the data analysis world, and although it's not network engineering, but I can relate so much to this video. Thanks!! My solution so far if my codes were not working or having g bugs, was mostly closing my computer, and crying for hours.Or finishing a jar of ice cream. Or sleeping, or taking a loooong walk then sleeping. And magically some codes will work in the next day. But not always. 🥺😭😭😭😭. And I am not talking to rubber ducks, I am always talking to the trees along my long debugging walk. 😞😟

I love the get rest idea

Adjacent topic suggestions: Logging frameworks - what they can do and what are the differences Application Monitoring - what they can do and what are the differences

Thank you for very useful videos!

Get help is by far the most efficient. How often did I write an email explaining the issue and after 80% of the email I got an idea how to solve the issue.

"Works on my machine!" ""We will ship your machine to customers then"

Thank you! Great video

Thank You So Much for this wonderful video...............🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Great stuff thanks

I can assure every developer that half the time you'll be using the debugging skill that you earn the hard way. This will help you do things quicker

Great tips !

great video!

thank you 🙂

This is so different than Alex's other videos...more human emotions than tech logic :)

Race conditions are absolutely the worst to debug and understand what you are dealing with at first Had it once in my job, and it was a production only bug on top of that, fixed by adding a good old sleep 5 between runs 😂, it was an automation process in an internal tool, no user interaction once it’s set up, so it’s ok if it takes time

Thank you

Thanks for awesome video sir

I won't even start looking into a bug unless a TPS report has been filed with a completed cover sheet. The cover sheet is very important.

thanks

take a walk saved me many times.

Yes I like print here

Please do videos on Load balancing and. Error 404, 403, 502 bad gateway. It will be more helpful for us. Also videos on TCP, DHCP, HTTP, HTTPS.

To own a cat is really important

what sources would you recommend to read to design a low-load alibaba?

How about debugging in microservice system during dev stage? I need to restart the service when I have changes in the code and it take like forever. My IDE is Intellij. Thanks for the tips!

Thanks. In what video editor are you using for animations and transitions?

I like writing questions on SO. Most of the time I'll realise I'm asking a poorly defined question or making too many assumptions. I often find the fix before submitting the question. Taking a break will often get me the same result if I'm just being dumb. But drafting a question is great for the complex ones.

In my experience, the most important jump in debugging skills is when you stop using the built-in IDE debugger. It's the most horrible and inefficient tool for solving actual production bugs that was ever created, but unfortunately it's also the one you'll probably be taught in your CS class or programming bootcamp. It just blew my mind when I understood that literally every other debugging technique provides at least 10x more efficiency compared to blindly stepping through the code and looking at local variables.

i don't agree with the possibility of always finding a cause, since compilers are often nondeterministic

Funny, Im literally didnt used debugger in java for last 10 years at all. Usually my problems related with rewriting a code due to growing requests and lack of scale capabilities.

3:55 java errors are always null pointer exceptions. thank me later.

Get help is the most effective. All the others are just chopping trees. Understand which forest you should be in before you start chopping.

All these are fine but asking for help immediately without even trying to resolve the problem by themselves not be an option

No hair pulling

I thought I was the only one who uses print “here” 😭

Now we can send the issue to chatGPT

your dev machine is very different than prod server.

The best strategy is to just start debugging, I don’t know why so much drama. What is Alex trying to say ?

The problem is: You talked about social techniques, like getting a pause, or talking to a duck, but you didnt explain any coding techniques to debug a code. Today I had to mentor another developer and mentioned clearly to comment parts of code, to lower the number of lines responsible for the problem.