Debugging in C# - Finding and Fixing Problems in Your Application

One of the most overlooked skills in a developer's toolbox is the ability to find and fix problems. Too often new developers avoid learning to diagnose problems because they want to get back to real programming but the reality is that you will probably spend more time debugging problems than you will building new applications. Today I am going to walk you through the five steps I go through every time I fix an error.

0:00 - Intro
4:23 - test the application for bugs and 5 steps to take when dealing with them
11:01 - "boolean" bug (dealing with user input)
15:43 - "do-while loop" bugs
21:53 - "for loop" bugs
26:32 - debugging the "for loop"
30:02 - "global variable" bugs
43:14 - "class instantiation" bugs
52:35 - testing edge cases and finding more bugs
56:25 - dealing with user input
1:13:15 - "if statement" bug. Flawed calculations.
1:18:27 - video summary and a piece of advice

[AbiyeKetema]

Debugging has always been a draw back for me because I never had a good teacher or resource like this. Thanks!

[kozavr]

I like how you explain everything slowly and going into every detail. Most of the YouTube bloggers shoot the words like they had to pay YouTube for every second of their videos.

[RalfsBalodis]

4:23 - test the application for bugs and 5 steps to take when dealing with them
11:01 - "boolean" bug (dealing with user input)
15:43 - "do-while loop" bugs
21:53 - "for loop" bugs
26:32 - debugging the "for loop"
30:02 - "global variable" bugs
43:14 - "class instantiation" bugs
52:35 - testing edge cases and finding more bugs
56:25 - dealing with user input
1:13:15 - "if statement" bug. Flawed calculations.
1:18:27 - video summary and a piece of advice

[lungelongcobo]

Thanks for the lesson Tim, I learnt more about debugging than I did in college, continue the great work.

[jonatancordoba]

This was actually a lot of fun; it's like a puzzle. You should make a "Debugging of the week" series. Love your content!

[vinuhosanagar]

Thank you. You are very underrated YouTuber Sir. Once people come to know about your channel, you are going to become too famous, which shall happen very soon :) :)

[FahadUlHassan]

Tim, Thanks for your help. According to me, you are the best teacher on C# and Programming.

[vartikagupta]

Thats a great video on debugging! I appreciate how patiently you explain every step along the way! Really helpful.

[shannonmoss-ehrmantraut]

This was a well put together, clearly communicated video. Thank you, Tim!

[risechess]

a lot to learn in this video thanks, i think u will do a do while loop in the next video for the first section, and some improvment could be to prevent the user from entering a negative number and not above 100 hour maybe and put the user in loop until he answer clear answer, also for yes or no we can force him to enter yes or no and put him in loop if he answer yeah or naaa until he give clear answer yes or no. and maybe if first question making sure he enter acme or abc if something else we also put him in loop. never trust the user :)

[venvilhenrydsilva]

Simply amazing.
Really appreciate the work you put forward, especially the edge cases... and different scenarios.

[MrLuckyalmond]

D on't panic.
R ead that error message.
I dentify the purpose of the code that broke.
F igure out what breaks that code.
T ry a new solution.

I love how you said to enjoy debugging. I get really frustrated and self-critical when I have issues, but like you said it's part of programming. And programming is awesome.

[adhoom]

you are like one of the most underrated guys on youtube and that bothering me

[korsbar]

You're the best at C# tutorials I've seen so far.

[EmersonWiller]

Hi Corey. Thank you for the video. Despite all things I learned here, definitely, the last part (piece of advice) was that you rock on!

[DameLyf]

People always say Mondays are the worse, I look forward because I know Tim will be dropping knowledge. I try to approach debugging by thinking like the user as I write, i.e let me put a letter in number box, this help me track the potential spots to check, appreciate the insight you provide on a weekly basis, looking for to another awful Monday next week 👊

[bharathyadav]

Kudos to the condition using TryParse. Learn’t something new. As always, great tutorial Corey. Keep it coming.

[jaytran]

thanks a lot for putting alot of effort making this video. really love this.

[YesYou]

The reason so many applications look like a mess out in the real world is because your boss wants it RIGHT NOW!!!! You don't have time to do it the right way. Too many software companies are lead by non-programmers that have NO IDEA what object orientation is OR EVEN CARE. You don't have time to write logging classes or create Exception classes that make the program easier to debug later.

[SomeGuy-becq]

Might be mentioned but im at work atm.
is so
It's basically more then half of your work sometimes and always the solution to "Don't know why, but it works", not writing millions of lines of new code.

The senior developers at work always starts with breaking points and start searching the call stack and not looking at the code at first. Just a tip for someone who just started out as a junior developer or are in school.

Great video as always Tim! Cheers!