Complete idiot's guide to Debugging

Time and again I have learnt much to my displeasure that I'm not efficient while debugging. Most often than otherwise, I would just miss the point and keep 'searching' for the issues. Sitting back I found one fundamental flaw in my approach to debugging a problem that there was no structure in my method! Instead of narrowing the cause-effect scenarios I was simply 'searching for the needle in the hay stack'. This would obviously take more time than expected and would lead to sheer wastage of my resources.

Learning about the scientific method of experimentation I found that solution of problems too complex for common sense to solve are achieved by mixture of inductive and deductive techniques.

The inductive logic demands us to start observing the 'system' and arrive at general conclusions. Make a mental note of your observations and try finding explanations to them chances are you would hit few observations which are not clearly understood in the given context, some thing which is kind of a 'mystery' and you find it tough to explain it the first time, hold on and do not get distracted collect information. Having done that now try to break your thoughts and write them under following heads;

1. Problem statement: The biggest mistake to avoid here is to write too much, things which you are not sure of.. just an assumption. Rather, it is much better to state the problem straight. It might sound dumb in he beginning but would save from making dumb efforts based on incorrect assumptions later ..
2. Hypotheses to he problem; typically list down possible reasons for the failure
3. Experiments to test your hypotheses: The most important mistake to avoid here is that the experiments must be designed to test the hypotheses nothing more nothing less. This step would help you narrow down your solution/problem area.
4. Expected outcomes will help you draw a base line for your experimentations.
5. Actual outcomes must be compared and contrasted with the expected outcome for rigour in the testing process. Any deviations must be carefully studied and isolated to ensure that the anomaly is not because of some mistakes/incorrect measurements this will save one from drawing incorrect conclusions.
6. Conclusion, here again care must be taken to state no more than the experiment proves/disproves.

By asking the right questions, conducting the right tests and drawing the right conclusions one might drill down the hierarchical structure of the problem to isolate the point of failure and fix it so that the system no longer fails at this point.

One might need to-fro between the two logical techniques to reach a plausible solution. Need to put this learning in practice now...