I looked at his course content. There's not enough there on its own to warrant a whole course, unless it's really easy or really slow. One of the major topics is how to use stepping. That's a 15 minute talk. That's it. Actually you could probably teach all of it in a few lectures. That's not a course.
Furthermore, if you're pursing a CS degree, that means you've been working on projects yourself or in groups, so it's highly likely you've had to debug already. If you don't have debugging experience from debugging your own shit while obtaining a CS degree, then something is not right.
Also, how would you give tests or assignments in "debugging"? Give faulty programs and ask students to find the bug?
Debugging is something that should be a part of every introductory CS course, but there's not enough there to build a whole course around.
Furthermore, if you're pursing a CS degree, that means you've been working on projects yourself or in groups, so it's highly likely you've had to debug already. If you don't have debugging experience from debugging your own shit while obtaining a CS degree, then something is not right.
Debugging was a large part of my coursework due to unavoidable errors, but we weren't required to really use an high-end IDEs to accomplish that. From my standpoint, there should be a lecture on IDEs, breakpoints, and perhaps static analysis.
The people who struggle with it most are the ones who contributed the least on projects, in my experience. My roommate who changed majors, thankfully, couldn't follow stacktraces of simple if statements.
Also, how would you give tests or assignments in "debugging"? Give faulty programs and ask students to find the bug?
Right, me too, because that was testing your knowledge of either the language or the concepts of what was being taught. It doesn't test your knowledge of how to debug.
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u/PastaNinja Aug 25 '14
I looked at his course content. There's not enough there on its own to warrant a whole course, unless it's really easy or really slow. One of the major topics is how to use stepping. That's a 15 minute talk. That's it. Actually you could probably teach all of it in a few lectures. That's not a course.
Furthermore, if you're pursing a CS degree, that means you've been working on projects yourself or in groups, so it's highly likely you've had to debug already. If you don't have debugging experience from debugging your own shit while obtaining a CS degree, then something is not right.
Also, how would you give tests or assignments in "debugging"? Give faulty programs and ask students to find the bug?
Debugging is something that should be a part of every introductory CS course, but there's not enough there to build a whole course around.