Suggest modification to this talk

Title

Description

RailsConf 2019 - Filling the Knowledge Gap: Debugging Edition by Mina Slater

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Cloud 66 - Pain Free Rails Deployments
Cloud 66 for Rails acts like your in-house DevOps team to build, deploy and maintain your Rails applications on any cloud or server.

Get $100 Cloud 66 Free Credits with the code: RailsConf-19
($100 Cloud 66 Free Credits, for the new user only, valid till 31st December 2019)

Link to the website: https://cloud66.com/rails?utm_source=-&utm_medium=-&utm_campaign=RailsConf19
Link to sign up: https://app.cloud66.com/users/sign_in?utm_source=-&utm_medium=-&utm_campaign=RailsConf19
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

We’re generally never officially taught to debug. No one tells us at bootcamp or in online tutorials what to do when our code doesn’t work. It’s one of those learn-it-on-the-job sort of things and comes with experience. As early-career developers, we get a lot of syntax thrown at us when we’re first learning, but in actuality, the majority of our time is spent trying to fix broken code. But why should we slog through it alone? Let’s explore some Rails debugging techniques together!

Date

Summarized using AI?

If this talk's summary was generated by AI, please check this box. A "Summarized using AI" badge will be displayed in the summary tab to indicate that the summary was generated using AI.

Show "Summarized using AI" badge on summary page

Summary

Markdown supported

In the presentation "Filling the Knowledge Gap: Debugging Edition" at RailsConf 2019, Mina Slater discusses the challenges early-career developers face with debugging, an area often overlooked in coding boot camps. Slater emphasizes that while boot camps equip graduates with foundational knowledge, they often leave essential debugging skills unaddressed, leading to significant knowledge gaps.

**Key Points Discussed:**
- **Introduction to Debugging:** Slater shares her own transition from a theater career to software development, struggling with debugging due to a lack of formal training. She highlights how error messages initially intimidated her, leading to avoidance rather than proactive debugging efforts.
- **Common Debugging Issues:** Graduates often lack efficient strategies for debugging. Many resort to reading error messages or scanning their code line by line, which can lead to ineffective debugging habits.
- **Three Essential Lessons for Debugging:** Slater organizes her insights into three lessons:
  - **Look Under the Hood:** Using tools like `pry` in Rails, developers can gain insights into their code during runtime. This method provides interactive debugging that allows for more thorough examination compared to simple print statements like `puts`.
  - **Tap the Phone Lines:** Utilizing browser developer tools, especially the network tab, can help identify issues that occur at the server level, such as HTTP errors which may manifest on the front end but are rooted in back-end issues.
  - **Find a Bug, Write a Test:** Writing tests for edge cases helps prevent regressions. Slater recounts a personal anecdote about addressing a bug where a database query returned no results, demonstrating how predictive testing can direct debugging efforts.

**Conclusion and Takeaways:**
Slater advocates for creating supportive work environments where developers can openly confront their knowledge gaps. She encourages early-career developers to embrace mistakes as learning opportunities rather than setbacks, reframing errors as challenges in need of resolution. In closing, she inspires attendees to actively engage in breaking their code to learn and enhance their debugging skills.

Cancel