Avoid using x and y as variable names to prevent students from confusing variable assignments with mathematical expressions.
Remind students that variable assignment occurs in the order assignments are given. This avoids the misconception that changing one value affects other variables assigned before it.
Have students keep a “bug collection” in a journal so they can more easily recognize and eliminate bugs in the future.
As a debugging technique, have students write out their programs in their spoken language and compare their description to the code in order to find bugs.
Use Practice-It as supplementary Java problems for an introductory programming course to give students more practice.