Debugging Like A Pro

[@anshul.1007]

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.)

[@nekrosis4431]

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.

[@LimitedWard]

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

[@ahmedelgaidi]

true😂

[@abhilashpatel6852]

I never dared to do so😂

[@hdhdushsvsyshshshs]

Its called: dockerize it

[@herroic]

Based on

[@samay-u2n]

That's how Docker is born ,shipping YOUR machine eventually, lol

[@bulaloitech]

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

[@ReflectionOcean]

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

[@timelschner8451]

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

[@plontulublalulu]

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

[@gigakoresh]

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.

[@andyl.5998]

What's instrumentation? Thx

[@gigakoresh]

@@andyl.5998 If you ask instead of googling it's probably not yet time for you to learn about that haha. But for sake of completeness - it's a framework and a cloud service that collects detailed metrics about your application runtime for inspection. Things like exceptions, function calls, heap and stack sizes, session count and so on.

[@andyl.5998]

​@@gigakoresh Thanks for the explanation! (Although the googling bit is uncalled for, it's not very conducive to normal conversation and can come off as somewhat arrogant...) Well, thanks again for explaining!

[@gigakoresh]

@@andyl.5998 My point was that whatever I explain here in the YT comment isn't really gonna help you understand this thing. I did not intend to come off as arrogant or anything, sorry. And if you actually felt like my explanation was helpful, and are not just saying this to be nice, then I am glad to be wrong.

[@andyl.5998]

@@gigakoresh Yes, your answer was indeed helpful because it answered my question of "What's instrumentation?". You can rightly assume that whoever asked that question knew nothing about the term, hence the question. But assuming the asker didn't google can be arrogant. If you actually googled that term yourself, the top results had nothing to do with your helpful answer here.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

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.

[@fullmastrinio]

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

[@a.nk.r7209]

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

[@wexwexexort]

I usually use print here then take a walk. xD

[@XxDraiNx]

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.

[@franciskas588]

Thats true but if you ask help too early all the time you wont improve your debugging skills.

[@dukecheng6400]

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！

[@afz902k]

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?

[@Pat315]

Honestly, that's so IDE/Language specific it's probably not worth it. You can easily look up a tutorial on your own. Also, nothing beats just doing it over and over.

[@henrythomas7112]

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

[@YU_meineLiebe]

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. 😞😟

[@gus473]

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

[@Martinit0]

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

[@stith_pragya]

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

[@anupamgarg3590]

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

[@f.p.5235]

I love the get rest idea

[@EclipseEngineer]

Thank you so much for this video

[@dizelvinable]

Thank you for very useful videos!

[@porroapp]

take a walk saved me many times.

[@antoineleduc7611]

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

[@DemPilafian]

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.

[@gus473]

🎈I believe you have my stapler. 🤓🔥

[@NursultanBegaliev]

Thank you! Great video

[@wwhill8033]

Great stuff thanks

[@shivananduppar1130]

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.

[@gabrielfuret4852]

great video!

[@in03]

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.

[@dontesmall5784]

Great tips !

[@alco8864]

To own a cat is really important

[@jerome-covington]

Also Pilates.

[@amitaiefrati4111]

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

[@BenGras]

I’m wondering the same thing. They are phenomenal.

[@deepaknbk]

true , video editor and the animations are just awesome. anyone know how they are created ?

[@abuyusufsherakhmatov]

Thanks for awesome video sir

[@dpokorna5]

thank you 🙂

[@BennySmith1976]

Thank you

[@jadenguyen8771]

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!

[@Plukh]

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.

[@youtubereview8176]

That sounds really awesome. I'm mostly just familiar with the IDE debugger. Is there a better way to debug backend code and programs like Java?

[@bibliusz777]

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

[@andyhall7032]

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

[@SaHaRaSquad]

ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException and IllegalArgumentException want a word.

[@InspirationInfuser]

useful video

[@boringmanager9559]

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

[@raj_kundalia]

thanks

[@software_training-ck9ng]

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.

[@gavin8535]

Yes I like print here

[@user-ox4ii2bw6x]

Its baffling to me that debugging is 80% of coding, but taught horribly in schools, after i got some debugging discipline all my coding became so much easier.

[@vmened]

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.

[@ethanneff9817]

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

[@nekrosis4431]

I found that the imaginary mentor (explaining the problem in an email I never send for example) helps me solve a lot of problems.

[@xslr]

@@nekrosis4431 indeed. That’s the idea behind the rubber duck!

[@SacredCASHcow]

getting help handicapped me personally. i can't learn that well from others I dont think like most people

[@pwrsa7]

this is why fuzz testing is the best approach wen reproducing bug is unreachable for a dev

[@Carol-b8Carol___8ome]

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[@pravinprabhu7295]

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

[@2009Spread]

Now we can send the issue to chatGPT

[@tytywuu]

This is equivalent to emailing to an imaginary mentor. I tried it, it works.

[@2009Spread]

​@@tytywuu No, emailing to an imaginary mentor has another effect. During emailing, you move the issue from your head to "paper". After this, you can see the issue from the side. ChatGPT likes Stack Overflow but receive you only one page solution, sometimes the response not truly

[@DemPilafian]

Sending the issue to ChatGPT has the additional benefit of letting Microsoft use your buggy code to inadvertently inject bugs into the code of your competitors who also rely on ChatGPT.

[@Parallaxxx28]

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

[@CyberMew]

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

[@ditsomusic]

No hair pulling

[@chrishabgood8900]

your dev machine is very different than prod server.

[@phoneix24886]

print("here1") possibly the GOAT