Technical Troubleshooting, Debugging

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Overall: American workers spend 3 hours each week troubleshooting; Source: Electric AI

Best Practices on Respectfully and Concisely Communicating Tech Issues:

• Urgency and criticality of issue, relevant info (error messages, affected systems), relevant recipients based on impact; Source: Lark Technologies

Hard Refresh/Clearing Browser's Cache

• when web page is failing to load correctly, consider a hard refresh (Windows: Ctrl key + Reload button; Mac: Shift key + Reload button) to clear your browser's cache for a specific web page; Source: San Diego State University

Debugging

• Debugging: finding, isolating, and resolving coding errors (bugs in software programs); helps uncover the root cause of coding errors, prevent software function issues, and improve the overall performance of software; Source: IBM

• coding errors that can lead to crashes, incorrect or inaccurate outputs, security vulnerabilities, and data loss: logical errors, runtime errors, syntax errors, and semantic errors; Source: IBM

  • logical error: technically correct syntax with incorrect directions causing undesired output

  • runtime error: when an application is running or starting up (usually can be fixed by refreshing, restarting, or reinstalling an application)

  • Syntax error: immediate error occurring when developer misses an element of code

  • semantic error: piece of code that violates rules of a coding language and will not produce meaningful output

• debugging process involves 6 steps to uncover the root cause of coding errors and fix: Source: IBM

  • 1. Reproduce the conditions

    • programmers and engineers are allowed to observe the error firsthand and collect contextual data

  • 2. Find the source of the Bug

    • thoroughly scrutinizing the code and reviewing any available logs by using debugging tools that allow searches of large pieces of code

  • 3. Determine the Root Cause

    • examining the logic and flow of the code and how different components of the code interact under the specific conditions in which the bug occurs

  • 4. Fix the Bug

    • revising the code to fix the issue and recompiling and re-running the software to make sure the big is fixed - using a version control system to track changes

  • 5. Test to validate the fix

    • Unit tests (test individual code segment), Integration Tests (test the whole module), System Tests (test entire system), Regression tests (ensure fixed code does not impact application performance)

  • 6. Document the process

• Types of Debugging: Backtracking using a debugger (developers work backward from the point the error was detected to find the origin of the bug), Divide and conquer, print and log debugging, rubber duck debugging, automated debugging, brute force debugging; Source: IBM

Bug Types

• Bug Types: Semantic Errors (won't produce a meaningful output), Syntax error (immediately causes errors), Logic errors (incorrect directions that cause an undesired output), Runtime errors (can usually be fixed by refreshing, restarting, or reinstalling an application). Source: IBM

• Logic error is caused by incorrect directions that cause an undesired output and requires stepping through the code for several different input/output scenarios (ex. code may exit a loop too early or may have an incorrect if-then outcome); Source: Amazon Web Services and IBM

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