The Art of Debbuging

The 4W Technique

From my perspective that we can solve any bugs by asking these four questions

• When
• What
• Where
• Why

When?

• When a bug or issue arises is the first question.
• In which scenario or test case does the bug occurs.
• First, we have to identifying the scenario.
• Then, confirm the scenario by repeating same case several time or similar case several time.
  

What?

• What is the desired output what is the program output?
• Simply what is your end goal?
  

Where?

•  Where is the skewing occurs from the desired path.
•  Where the processing input gets modified to something not intended or remains unchanged when it should have been processed.
  
•  Or In case of error, Where is the exception or error occurs?
• In java which class -> function -> line does the error occurs?
• It can be identified from error stack trace.
  

Why?

• At last the most crucial part, Why it occurs ??
• Why whatever happens, happens?
  
• If you find out why it occurs you can most possible solve it.
• If there is an exception there may be validation problem. So we can validate for the particular case.
• If there is some processing left undone, finish it.

End Note:

 

According to Murphy's law "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong". So, don't sweat it. 

 

PS: It is not a standard scientific method. But this is what I do to solve the problem.

That's it!