Debugging Post Mortem

This page describes how to write an optional debugging post mortem to hand in with your weekly exercises.

Debugging Post Mortem

We expect a typical post mortem to be at least a couple of paragraphs of words, though that is not a hard requirement. If you find yourself not having much to say, then the experience may not be interesting enough to write about.

We want you tell us the story of the bug -- what you first noticed was wrong, how you traced the cause, and the twists and turns along the way.

Here are some tips. (You don't necessarily have to do these -- just tell a good story.)

• Give relevant background on the way your code works.
• Describe what feature were you working on when you noticed that something was wrong.
• Describe the initial symptom of the problem.
• Explain how you worked backwards from the initial symptom towards the causes.
  • This doesn't necessarily have to be historically accurate. Instead, you can also describe how you should have worked backwards.
• Is there something you could have done to prevent this bug, to notice it earlier, or to make it easier to find?

Submit your document via this form.