Computer Science for Education

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====== Week 12: Debugging and Unit Testing ======

===== Objectives =====

  * Teach effective ways to find bugs in programs.
  * Motivate students to adequately test their programs.

===== Readings for Class Discussion =====

  * Christensen (2008). [[http://www.springerlink.com/content/1142023521204862/|Experiences with a Focus on Testing in Teaching]].  BCK.
  * McCauley (2008). [[http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08993400802114581|Debugging: A Review of the Literature from an Educational Perspective]].

Optional:
  * Ahmadzadeh (2005). An Analysis of Patterns of Debugging Among Computer Science Students.
  * Murphy (2010). Pair Debugging: A Transactive Discourse Analysis.

===== Topics =====

  * Programming by testing first
  * Using a debugger (Java vs. C/C++)
  * Keys to debugging (from Horstmann, Chapter 6):
    * breakpoints
    * single-stepping
    * inspecting variables
  * Assertions and invariants
  * Unit testing
  * Code coverage and creating test cases

===== Lab ======

  * AP CS: Locate sections in Horstmann related to debugging and testing
  * JUnit testing in Eclipse (http://www.eclipse.org)
  * JSwat (http://code.google.com/p/jswat/)

Computer Science for Education

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