Live debugging : a new debugging experience

Abstract

Understanding and working with unfamiliar code is often a challenge of software integration or debugging. This process requires awareness of the program state and the call hierarchy, which introduces significant cognitive overhead. With the advent of new and innovative debugging such as back in time debugging, debugging with visualization and interrogative debugging users have even more powerful ways of exploring and investigating source code.

In the meantime, this increased complexity can lead to overwhelming cognitive demands that can stress the user. As such, it is vital to study them from various alternate points of view. One important point of view looks at the degree to which an interface supports developers and beginners in understanding the execution flow of their programs. These debugging techniques can be extended to develop new methods for program visualization to help beginners in learning how to program. The aim is to enhance the learner’s understanding of the different aspects of the program execution.

This project aims to propose and design a prototype, which gives the user control over program visualization and allows the user to focus on memory and variable allocation as well as providing them visual representation of object. The user can see the program steps from different viewpoints by going forward and backwards in time and it’s easy to use especially for the user. Thus the author will propose and design a program visualization tool that will use new visualizations to aid flow comprehension and reduce cognitive overhead.