Debugging and Testing Java Code
When looking at Java or even other languages, it is not uncommon to make mistakes and encounter bugs. Other than just writing code, it is the developer’s duty to locate problems and fix them – and do this in the most optimal way possible. And this is where debugging and testing are important. You can consider both of these practices as being amongst the fundamentals of writing good winning code. In this article, we are going to determine the relevance of debugging and testing in Java, its role in the software lifecycle in terms of quality assurance, and what can help improve the application of these methods.What is Debugging?
Debugging can simply be defined as the act of seeking out, examining, and correcting one or several bugs present in your source code. A bug can be anything as simple as a misspelling all the way to more advanced corruption that may change how an entire system runs. After all, it is through debugging that one can ensure there aren’t any issues within a program, and it is known that even the smallest issue can completely change how an application will run (functionality, performance, security, etc).
There are distinct stages in the process of debugging. The first one is to investigate to find out where exactly the issue is, the next step is to contain the problem, and the last step is to rectify the problem. The sequences and steps may sometimes rely on guesswork, for example, when the fault is hard to track or is incorporated in a difficult code.
In Java particularly, there are different skills that include tools or techniques that make debugging simple. Such tools can be incorporated with development environments such as **Eclipse** or **IntelliJ IDEA**. More often than not these tools include superb debuggers that allow you to check your code, control acts of variables and move through the flow of execution of the program.
IntelliJ Business Models Java Debugging Techniques
The majority of Java developers employ numerous strategies in order to debug their applications without much hassle. Out of those strategies, here is the most basic one:
1. Print Statements:
Ts insert bastions as a method of debugging on the code is including an inadequate number of verification points (for instance `'System.out.print('))` to suppress the yell of data prints. In this approach, printing the output of several variable values in a program allows one to identify the sore spots in a program. This technique of debugging is sometimes better than nothing. But it’s surely more effective at producing comprehensive verifications.2. Breakpoints:
Modern IDEs allow you to set breakpoints in your code. A breakpoint is a specific point the programmer tells the debugging tool to halt the execution. Whenever a program execution reaches a breakpoint, the user can view the states of variables and the execution of the program by seeing the whole code, one line at a time.3. Watch Expressions:
Remember the `watch` command? In some cases you have control over a variable or an expression, but you do not know its value. IDEs allow you to set watch expressions, which lets you see how the values change during the execution of your program while keeping a variable’s value constant. This comes really handy when you have loops or conditions that change the variables in strange ways.4. Stack Traces:
Java provides error reports that are known as stack traces. These reports allow you to go back through the series of methods that were called to track an error until the point at which the request failed. That is why stack traces are very useful when you must analyze a bug that throws the exception `NullPointerException` or any exception, so long as it is an `ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException`.What is Testing?
Code testing is the execution of code with the intention of verifying that the code behaves as intended. When working with Java, for instance, code is usually tested using tools such as **JUnit**, which tests the smallest portions of code, e.g. methods or classes. Whereas debugging is mainly concerned with the rectification of existing problems by locating them, testing is concerned with helping prevent future problems from occurring and helps ascertain that the code one writes is correct from the beginning.
This, in turn, helps in confirming that the program works as it is supposed to under different situations. It includes creating test cases to address normal as well as edge case conditions. Normal cases occur when any number within the expected range is used as the input while edge cases deal with quite one or a lot of unlikely scenarios such as a user input that is not accepted or the value of the input on the boundary.
To mitigate failure and ensure a certain level of success, there are various types of tests that can be implemented during the software development phase, such as unit tests, integration tests and system tests. Each test aims at achieving a different goal and makes it possible for several code segments to work as they should.
