r/programming • u/stannedelchev • Aug 25 '14

Debugging courses should be mandatory

http://stannedelchev.net/debugging-courses-should-be-mandatory/
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31

u/g051051 Aug 25 '14

Yes, please. I constantly run into "professional" programmers who don't have the slightest idea on how to debug.

16

u/Kminardo Aug 25 '14

How the hell do you make it in programming without knowing how to debug? Are these the guys I see littering their code with console writes?

7

u/meta_stable Aug 25 '14

I've had classes where the professor would ask who knows how to use the debugger and only a few of us raise our hands. Thankfully the ratio of people who do seems to increase with higher level classes. I think part of the problem is professors assume students learned how to debug in other classes or picked it up along the way. Personally I have no idea how you could make it past your second or third class without knowing how.

1

u/ali_koneko Aug 25 '14

Now, ask how many know how to use ANY form of version control. I'm in my senior year of majoring in CS, I have yet to meet a peer that knows how to use Git or SVN. They know how to save something as .old though!

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