Cognitive activities and support in debugging

Features of debugging aids have been currently developed to facilitate the debugging process at times without explicit cognitive considerations. We investigate the design rationale for developing debugging aids and analyze the role of debugging tools available today. By investigating the programmers' debugging process, we analyze the process of debugging and how debugging aids can help programmers. Debugging is performed mainly through the comprehension and isolation strategies along with abstractions. While debugging tools including tracing memory viewing, control flow graphs, and visualizations support the comprehension strategy, functions such as backtracking and breakpoints facilitate the isolation strategy. Debugging aids should help programmers enhance their understanding of the program and facilitate the process of gathering clues and searching for, and identifying the bug. Finally, we provide some suggestions on building more sophisticated debugging aids.