Let students debug their code alone for a few minutes before intervening because students might feel that they should be able to find bugs immediately, which isn’t the case.

  • Students often feel they should be debugging faster because they see you debug quickly or perceive that their peers are also debugging quickly.

    • Make sure to remind students that you can debug faster than they can because of your knowledge of the assignment.

  • This is why it’s crucial to make sure students try debugging on their own for a few minutes.

    • Students should only try debugging on their own for a few minutes.

    • It is important to tell students that they should ask for help if they are spending hours debugging.

      • Knowing when to ask for help is very important, even for professionals, when it comes to debugging.

    • Additionally, it is hard to for students to debug code entirely on their own.

      • It’s difficult for people to detect their own logic mistakes.

More about this tip

External Source

Interview with Leo Porter.

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