WEBVTT 0 00:00.420 --> 00:02.970 Now, I've got some final tips for debugging, 1 00:03.150 --> 00:07.770 and these are not so much techniques, but there are just really, 2 00:07.770 --> 00:11.820 really important tips from somebody who's done quite a lot of coding and created 3 00:12.180 --> 00:14.520 a massive amount of bugs in my lifetime. 4 00:15.150 --> 00:18.930 So tip number 7 is take a break. It's really, 5 00:18.930 --> 00:23.930 really important when you're just staring at the code and you keep looking at 6 00:24.480 --> 00:27.120 it, it's not going to tell you the solution. 7 00:27.360 --> 00:30.210 Just have a cup of tea or have a nap, 8 00:30.240 --> 00:32.850 or just go to sleep and try to tackle it tomorrow. 9 00:33.240 --> 00:38.100 You will be surprised just how much easier things are when your brains had some 10 00:38.100 --> 00:42.330 downtime and then you come back to it. Everything seems so much more obvious. 11 00:43.110 --> 00:47.850 And if you really, really get stuck and you just can't see it, ask a friend, 12 00:48.090 --> 00:51.540 not your friend print, but your actual friend, 13 00:51.570 --> 00:56.010 a real human. Preferably a developer, but they don't have to be. 14 00:56.040 --> 00:58.320 It could be somebody who's taking the course with you. 15 00:58.560 --> 01:03.450 You could go onto discord and find other students to help you because after all, 16 01:03.480 --> 01:06.150 you're all just leveling up your own programming skills 17 01:06.150 --> 01:10.890 right? The really good thing about asking a friend to look through your code is 18 01:11.100 --> 01:14.010 they won't make the same assumptions that you've made. 19 01:14.310 --> 01:17.310 So they have some fresh eyes that they can look at the code with, 20 01:17.550 --> 01:20.910 and it might be incredibly obvious what's actually happening. 21 01:21.270 --> 01:23.010 And it's really not embarrassing at all. 22 01:23.280 --> 01:25.320 If somebody managed to help you with your code, 23 01:25.830 --> 01:30.780 you can offer to help them the next time when they get stuck. And for the person 24 01:30.780 --> 01:31.650 who's helping you, 25 01:31.980 --> 01:36.390 they're also just working out their programming muscles, right? Now 26 01:36.390 --> 01:40.170 the next tip is to run often. No, 27 01:40.200 --> 01:43.260 you don't have to go exercising to be a good programmer. 28 01:43.860 --> 01:46.740 But what I mean is run your code often. 29 01:47.100 --> 01:51.000 Don't wait until you've written loads and loads of code to hit run 30 01:51.000 --> 01:54.090 and then find out you've got loads of snags and loads of bugs. 31 01:54.420 --> 01:57.330 But run it after every little execution. 32 01:57.750 --> 02:02.750 Once you feel like you've changed the program ever so slightly, run it. Confirm 33 02:02.820 --> 02:04.770 that it's actually doing what you want it to do, 34 02:05.400 --> 02:07.290 because if you leave it all to the end, 35 02:07.380 --> 02:11.760 then you end up with a pile of bugs and you don't know where to start. Now, 36 02:11.790 --> 02:16.680 if you do end up in that situation and you can see multiple bugs at the same 37 02:16.680 --> 02:19.410 time, try to tackle them one at a time 38 02:19.440 --> 02:23.280 instead of trying to do bits and bobs of each. It will really, really help. 39 02:24.210 --> 02:28.710 And the final tip is, of course, Stack Overflow. I've saved this the last 40 02:28.710 --> 02:33.030 because you really don't want to take every single small bug of yours to Stack 41 02:33.030 --> 02:36.300 Overflow, that's not what it's designed for. Instead, 42 02:36.330 --> 02:41.250 it's really designed as a way of asking other developers 43 02:41.610 --> 02:46.610 when you think that you've come across a bug or an issue that should be unique. 44 02:47.370 --> 02:51.240 Now, if you think that you issue isn't unique and other people should have 45 02:51.330 --> 02:54.240 encountered this, then just search Stack Overflow. 46 02:54.840 --> 02:58.410 If you really think that nobody in the world has had this issue that you are 47 02:58.410 --> 03:02.890 having right now, then that's the moment to ask the oracle, I mean Stack 48 03:02.890 --> 03:03.723 Overflow. 49 03:04.360 --> 03:08.290 I've worked in a lot of companies where everybody just goes to the part when 50 03:08.290 --> 03:11.980 Stack Overflow is down, because there's just no point. As programmers 51 03:12.010 --> 03:17.010 we use it and we search it so much and it's become a really vital tool in the tool 52 03:17.410 --> 03:18.243 belt. 53 03:18.400 --> 03:23.230 But you only wanna ask a question when you've pretty sure that you've exhausted 54 03:23.320 --> 03:28.090 all other avenues of debugging and you've searched all of Stack Overflow and you 55 03:28.090 --> 03:32.080 finally end up with something very strange and very weird that you want others 56 03:32.080 --> 03:35.680 to help you figure out. So don't worry about creating bugs. 57 03:35.710 --> 03:39.190 And hopefully at this point, you're creating friendly bugs, 58 03:39.190 --> 03:40.990 like this little Caterpillar right now. 59 03:41.380 --> 03:44.260 And as you scale up and become even more advanced, 60 03:44.530 --> 03:49.210 you're going to be creating bigger and more scary bugs. 61 03:49.750 --> 03:53.110 So at some point in the future, when you're creating bugs like these, 62 03:53.470 --> 03:56.260 then you really know that you've become a professional. 63 03:56.620 --> 04:00.610 You will wish to come back to today when you can tackle bugs like these 64 04:00.630 --> 04:02.880 instead. So don't worry about 65 04:02.880 --> 04:06.450 about creating them. It doesn't mean that you are bad programmer. In fact, 66 04:06.450 --> 04:11.400 it's an important part of every programmer's journey. Just as a sort of personal 67 04:11.400 --> 04:11.670 note, 68 04:11.670 --> 04:15.570 there was a point in time where I've really thought that I was not a programmer of 69 04:15.570 --> 04:18.900 code, that I was just a programmer of bugs. 70 04:18.900 --> 04:21.810 It seemed like every line of code I wrote was a bug. 71 04:22.530 --> 04:25.800 So these are my 10 top tips for debugging. 72 04:26.100 --> 04:30.870 And I hope that any time when your code is not doing what you expect it to do to 73 04:30.870 --> 04:35.610 come back to this lesson, review these 10 steps, go through them one by one 74 04:36.060 --> 04:40.860 and I bet 99% of the time, once you've gone through all of these stages, 75 04:41.130 --> 04:45.000 you will have solved your bug and you will have made your code a lot better. 76 04:45.330 --> 04:50.330 And remember that every bug that you catch in your code and that you fix is like 77 04:50.580 --> 04:53.190 lifting a dumbbell in the gym. It's just one rep. 78 04:53.490 --> 04:57.930 And the more reps you do the better you'll get at programing. In the next 79 04:57.930 --> 05:01.800 lesson, I've got some coding challenges for you to debug. 80 05:02.340 --> 05:05.280 Are you ready to flex your programming muscles? 81 05:05.640 --> 05:08.850 I hope so. Head over to the next lesson and get started.