Skip to content

12 September 2024

In this meeting we did a test run through our Introduction to Debugging workshop, prior to running this workshop at the SPECTRUM Annual Meeting (23–25 September, 2024).

Attendance: 3 in person, 7 online

Introduction to Debugging workshop

Feedback was generally positive. However, attendees noted that the errors in the provided code exercises were simple enough that they could be identified without using a debugger.

  • We may need code examples that are more complex, to ensure that participants actually need to use a debugger.

    • The final exercise may be sufficiently complex?

    • We might also include an SIR-type compartmental model with some logic errors (although these can be hard to hide!).

  • We can also ask participants to practice using a debugger with a code example where there is no error.

Based on her past experiences, Nefel suggested including an example of triggering a breakpoint only when an error occurs (e.g., using a try statement in Python and calling breakpoint() in an except clause).