Debugging with logs
A simple yet effective way of detecting what's going on and how the code is being executed is adding comments that are displayed either containing statements like starting the loop here or including values of variables like Value of A = X. By strategically locating these kinds of outputs, the developer can understand the flow of the program.
We touched on this earlier in this chapter as well as in Chapter 10, Testing and TDD.
The simplest form of this approach is print debugging. It consists of adding print statements to be able to watch the output from them, normally while executing the code locally in a test or similar.
Print debugging can be considered a bit controversial to some people. It has been around for a long time, and it's considered a crude way of debugging. In any case, it can be very quick and flexible and can fit some debug cases very well, as we will see.
Obviously, these print statements need...
