First you find a bug & then you de-bug.
It’s that simple isn’t it?
All software applications have bugs – some cause no real problems and go unnoticed, others are minor and a minority wreak havoc. You might be surprised to hear that software providers LOVE hearing about possible bugs via bug reports. They love it even more if the steps that lead up to the strange behaviour can be replicated by their Application Development Team because this means the bug is real and can be fixed.
Without the help of users (essentially many hands and eyes) application developers can’t hope to capture every bug for debugging try as they might.
In the classroom it’s a fantastic exercise to give students a simple program with a bug or two it. This way they really REALLY have to
- be systematic in their approach – record steps taken etc
- be tightly focused on isolating the area where the bug is likely to be
- be able to step through the programme in it’s component parts or sections
- develop an understanding of how the larger whole can be viewed in chunks
Here at Blippit we were able to find and de-bug a FANTASTIC bug in quick fashion this month thanks to two schools who took the time to file a bug report (they told us about it basically) to support@blippit.co.uk . This lead to more detailed info gathering, a school visit from us and finally within a week and a half a global update of Blippit IO. They helped us improve Blippit IO in a measurable way for the thousands of students and teachers who are using Blippit IO across the UK, Australia and US.
If you’re a lovely Blippit IO User, we are going to make it nice and easy for you to report anything that feels like a bug to you soon. More about that to follow.
