Other techniques

Simplifying the problem

Divide and conquer technique - isolate the problem and find the part of a data file that is causing a problem:

• Use a binary search...

Tracking origins

Again divide and conquer to isolate the problem

• Comment out calls to subroutines
• Get subroutines to return dummy data
• Last resort - Comment out blocks of code

Reproducing failures

Create test code and data that allows you to reproduce the problem. Ensure you keep examples that work as well so you can ensure that fixes haven't broken anything else.

Good to have isolated examples (i.e. from the 'simplifying' procedure)

Learning from mistakes

Mine information from bug and change databases to find where bugs have been introduced and which parts of a program are most likely to be buggy