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January 14, 2004

Basic troubleshooting rules

Here are a few basic rules of troubleshooting and debugging.

  1. Divide and conquer (always)
  2. 50/50 tests are best
  3. Verify can't happen cases with a test
  4. Steady progress is better than random guessing
  5. If you guess and fail, go back to #1. Don't try to keep guessing.

I've been trying to formulate a good set of troubleshooting and debugging rules for years. Ever since I was training entry-level programmers and realized that I couldn't always explain how I found a problem or spotted a bug.

Posted by GWade at January 14, 2004 07:58 PM. Email comments
Copyright 2004, G. Wade Johnson. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution License 2.5.