Divide and conquer: A Troubleshooting and Debugging Workshop

To be successful developer, we have to be able to solve problems we inadvertently introduce along the way. Let’s learn to troubleshoot and debug issues!

We'll organize our approach to a problem by analyzing it, simplifying it, splitting it into its component parts, and finding what part has the problem.

After dividing the problem, we'll use classic debugging techniques to pinpoint the error and find a solution:

• Use a debugger like XDebug paired with PhpStorm or VSCode to step over and through key sections.
• Set breakpoints where we suspect the problem may lie or where we can inspect variables and data.
• Inspect the contents of the database to see what is happening there.

For extra credit, we'll take a look at how to use git bisect to determine when a bug got introduced. We will talk about using tools and techniques, like version control and database snapshots, to assist in the problem-solving task. ChatGPT is bound to make a cameo as well.