Re: Cost of leaving debug statements in code

Hello Mark,  

imo, When production code encounters a serious error condition, it should leave enough clues, in an easily accessible place. So that support people, maybe hours later, can determine what it was trying do and the error condition it encountered. It should also stop the task (program, suite etc).
  I do not recommend, under any circumstances, running debugging code for support people, although i do recommend leaving the debug code in (commented out). The debugging code is for the programmer not support. My fear is that not enough attention will be paid to *good* (meaningful) error reporting. Debugging code, by its nature, tends to be quite cryptic in the information it delivers, and can be meaningless unless an understanding of the code works is obtained. It is not fair to expect support people to do this even if they are programmers. The programmers tend to leave the site (system) and other people, without the intimate knowledge have to understand and appreciate the error messages.

 Support people do not want or need all the 'debugging information', which fulfills a completely different function other than error reporting.

please remember these are just my opinions not criticisms of anyone.

graham (aka grumpy)

nwa_at_isd.net (Mark Everhart) wrote...

| Debate raging in current organization about the cost vs benefit of leaving
| debug output statements in production code. Currently, a private Boolean
| variable can be set On or Off by using public procedures. This variable is
| evaluated and if True then a debug package is called to output values of
| variables or whatever.
|
| The argument rages over the cost of evaluating the Boolean variable at
| numerous places in the code. Obviously, the poor souls manning the beepers
| would like to have the option of re-running a production job that goes down
| with the debug set on, so they can evaulate more accurately the cause of a
| problem, fix it, and go back to sleep or whatever.
|

Graham Miller ...
Opinions expressed are mine, they are free, and worth exactly what they cost. Received on Thu Jun 05 1997 - 00:00:00 CDT