The Core Debugging Process

The core of the debugging process consists of four steps:

Reproduce:

Find a way to reliably and conveniently reproduce the problem on demand.

Diagnose:

Construct hypotheses, and test them by performing experiments until you are confident that you have identified the underlying cause of the bug.

Fix:

Design and implement changes that fix the problem, avoid introducing regressions, and maintain or improve the overall quality of the software.

Reflect:

Learn the lessons of the bug. Where did things go wrong? Are there any other examples of the same problem that will also need fixing? What can you do to ensure that the same problem doesn’t happen again?

Debugging is an iterative process.

As shown in Figure 1, ...

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