Debug Facilities, BlueJ, & Donald Knuth
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The BlueJ development environment offers simple but sufficient debugging facilities for those new to and learning the art of programming. Renowned computer scientist Don Knuth once in an interview made an interesting comment. When asked what his favorite programming language was, he replied that it would be the language that had the best debugging facilities. It is interesting that Knuth, rather than commenting on features of a particular programming language, emphasized the value of debugging tools. Based on your experience in this course so far, what are your thoughts on Knuth's response? In what ways might you agree? In what ways might you disagree?
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Solution answers questions based on a scenario of The BlueJ development environment, which offers simple but sufficient debugging facilities for those new to and learning the art of programming. Renowned computer scientist Don Knuth once in an interview made an interesting comment. When asked what his favorite programming language was, he replied that, "it would be the language that had the best debugging facilities." It is interesting that Knuth, rather than commenting on features of a particular programming language, emphasized the value of debugging tools. Based on your experience in this course so far, what are your thoughts on Knuth's response? In what ways might you agree? In what ways might you disagree?
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Proper debugging facilities - in contrast to a having favorite programming language - is of utmost importance. In fact, such commentary would only come from someone that is highly experienced in the field of technology. Why? In addition to being a computer scientist, mathematician, and Professor Emeritus at Stanford University, Donald Knuth is one of the leading computer programmers in the United States of America.
Debugging is a subject that would make most computer programmers cringe on the thought of having to analyze and revise code. Have you ever had to do this in a program, such as C++ where it is virtually impossible to figure out what is going wrong? Debugging can be generally thought of, or defined as the art and science of detecting, diagnosing, and correcting errors in software programs. Unlike the usual typo-s in a word document or printed page, if only one character is misplaced, the debugger will generate an error (amongst many), which can be challenging for those who have hundreds (or even thousands) of lines of code in a program. It can take hours and days to solve code errors. However, luckily in the present day, debugger programs are far more efficient at detection to enable better correction in software systems.
In one of his famous books, 'The Art of Computer ...
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