Debugging

Logging is a great method to monitor the progress of a program while at the same time maintaining flexibility to control the output. Simply put, logging is just printing out statements during the runtime of an application. In another blog I described a simplistic method for logging - using System.out.println. More advanced logging libraries however go beyond just printing to the console - their flexibility allows control of when, how, and where to log.

Many logging libraries exist, ...

The term SSCCE gets thrown around a lot in online programming forums. Its a simple acronym that stands for Short, Self Contained, Correct Example. But what is so important about an SSCCE? For starters, creating an SSCCE provides a very simple example that clearly demonstrates a given problem, helping one receive help and advice much quicker. But it also goes far beyond just that. Often just the process alone of writing an SSCCE will unveil the problem at hand. But even more important, the process ...

System.out.prinln is quite possibly the most useful debugging tool there is - especially for the beginner programmer with no knowledge of other tools such as debuggers, assertions, and/or loggers. System.out.println prints to the command line the values passed to the method as an argument (if an object is passed, the String returned by Object.toString() is printed). For debugging, this tool allows the programmer to evaluate a variable value at a certain position in the code. But that's only the ...