Debugging is simply fixing problems with your code so that it will work correctly.  Often times in games bugs can be hard to find, so to debug your games, you will both run the game through a couple times, and also try to get into weird scenarios that are not expected, trying to find problems.

As for using Rcl, i dont know what he was using it for o.O

So I've been seeing the term "debug" or "debugging" be tossed around here and there and was curious what is meant by it exactlly. I also saw Ztrumpet say that he uses Rcl to help debug too. Can anyone explain this?

It's when we want to grab a hammer and smash our calc when trying to get our programs to work.

J/k, what Builderboy said

Or it could be like what weregoose does where he just keeps putting together random tokens until he gets the most efficient and speedy solution.

Or smallest

output(A,A/2) doesN,t that give an ERR:ARGUMENT/SYNTAX error?

Also to check if a If/while/repeat/for loop/condition is not missed, I add + at the beginnign of it so if I get ERR:SYNTAX, it's ran correctly, then I move the + a few lines lower, try again.

Also for missing/too many Ends, what you can do in your head is start with the number 0, then everytime a Then/while/repeat/for is encountered, increment by 1, and when a End is encountered, decrement by 1. If at the end it's higher than 0, an End is missing somewhere. If it's lower, then you have too many.

TI-BASIC has this annoying limitation of not having EndIf, EndRepeat, EndWhile or EndFor instructions. In other languages, it makes code much easier to read.

That does make a lot of sense, would have been useful to know that a few days ago
And thanks for the tips DJ.

Debugging is a magical thing that lets you kill the bugs in your program.

Also, I agree with player.
Recalling the last value is a great technique.
Use it often.

Quote from: _player1537 on April 11, 2010, 02:10:06 am

Basicly, with Rcl you can recall certain numbers into your code.  So say this happens:  You have a program that looks like

Code: [Select]

For(A,1,10)
output(A,A/2,"A")
End
well, when you run this you get a domain error.  So you press 2 to goto the part of your code.  But then you want to look at what number it was that messed your code up, but don't want to go to the homescreen.  So you press [2nd][Rcl] and then A to recall A into your code.  Now you can see exactly what number messed up your code.  Its a pretty useful method imo.  If that doesn't make sense tell me.

That actually is pretty easy. Row/column numbers used in output can only be whole numbers, so for the statement For(A,1,10), A will be troublesome every other number. That is not a hammer situation. I can show you a hammer situation.

ok, I was just out of examples, it works really well in whatever code I have that messes up.