Debugging Exercises about ruby-exercises HOT 6 CLOSED

I can help out with this issue!

I was thinking of creating some buggy matrix methods, since we don't cover matrices to a large extent in TOP. This could include sum_of_row(matrix, row_number). The corresponding tests will fail, initially, so students will need to use pry or byebug to fix the implementation.

My worry is that some students will just ignore the "debugging" and reimplement the method by themselves. Do you think I should set an initial breakpoint in the first method? This might encourage them to do the same for the rest of the methods.

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Hi @kellydanma, we would love to have your help with this.

Since putting this issue up I have some different ideas about how we should provide debugging exercises.

1. I think we should have some exercises that don't have tests and the user has to run with something like ruby exercise.rb. These will contain a runtime error and the goal for the student will be to fix the error so the programs run without breaking.
2. For the second set of exercises we can have exercises backed with tests that return the wrong result, the user will be expected to find out why using pry or puts etc.

This will fit nicely with the different types of debugging we teach in the lesson these exercises will be included in. I think since these exercises are so different from what we have already, we should have them in their own debugging_exercises folder in the root directory of this repo.

I was thinking of creating some buggy matrix methods, since we don't cover matrices to a large extent in TOP.
I like the idea of uses matrices, I'd be a little worried that it might be slightly too advanced for this part of the course though. This lesson comes quite early on and we have a lot of students who are just learning programming for the first time.

We are building out a language agnostic computer science course in the curriculum, we should definitely include matrices there.

My worry is that some students will just ignore the "debugging" and reimplement the method by themselves. Do you think I should set an initial breakpoint in the first method? This might encourage them to do the same for the rest of the methods.

I think explaining that they should fix the existing code and not delete it in the read me should be enough :)

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I like the idea of uses matrices, I'd be a little worried that it might be slightly too advanced for this part of the course though.

Some of the enumeration exercises are quite challenging already. I think the goal for a matrix-based exercise would be to teach debugging, not to have the student implement creating the matrix. For example, one such debugging exercise would be fixing the row that is returned. Matrices are indexed at 1, instead of 0; the student will use a breakpoint to discover the indexing mistake and correct it. They will not be building a matrix from scratch.

Maybe I can prototype something first?

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Maybe I can prototype something first?

That would be brilliant, thanks @kellydanma

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I added a prototype 😊 I'll be offline for the rest of the weekend, but I'll check in with you next week. Have a great rest of your weekend!

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I'm working on these at the moment as part of TheOdinProject/curriculum#23647 , after rlmoser suggested adding debugging exercises to the Debugging Lesson as a part of my PR which involves that lesson.

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