Software Debugging (Udacity)

At the end of this course you will have a solid understanding about systematic debugging, will know how to automate debugging and will have built several functional debugging tools in Python.

What You Will Learn

Lesson 1
How Debuggers work

• Theory: Scientific method and its application to debugging.
• Fun fact: First bug in the history of computer science.
• Practice: Building a simple tracer.

Lesson 2
Asserting Expectations

• Theory: Assertions in testing and in debugging.
• Fun fact: The most expensive bug in history.
• Practice: Improving the tracer.

Lesson 3
Simplifying Failures

• Theory: Strategy of simplifying failures. Binary search. Delta debugging principle.
• Fun fact: Mozilla bugathon.
• Practice: Building a delta debugger.

Lesson 4
Tracking Origins

• Theory: Cause-effect chain. Deduction. Dependencies. Slices.
• Fun fact: Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson.
• Practice: Improving the delta debugger.

Lesson 5
Reproducing Failures

• Theory: Types of bugs (Bohr bug
• Heisenbug
• Mandelbug
• Schrodinbug). Systematic reproduction process.

-Fun fact: Mad laptop bug.

• Practice: Building a statistic debugging tool.

Lesson 6
Learning from Mistakes

• Theory: Bug database management. Classifying bugs. Bug maps. Learning from mistakes.
• Fun fact: Programmer with the most buggy code.
• Practice: Improving your tools and practicing on a real world bug database.