I am completely helpless with these new debugging tasks.

somehow i also found this after some blood and tears but i still have no idea why this is the solution xd

I can't remember the code, but I remember like maybe I understood why :D

Thank you Darko! I could not for the life of me figure out why I was bouncing up and down even using the debugger until I read your note!

If you could help me out on this, I am stuck and its driving me crazy... I changed the access modifer but still wont verify, could you help me?

Lmao I labeled this comment as the solution haha

ROFL!

I'm on 18 and still nothing on debugging, which is a must have skill according to every developer on the planet

Yeah I know, but I've been skipping it for far too long and hoped that code gym will cover me on debugging as well on Enums :/

Good point, I've also skipped it. I plan to go back at the end of level 20 and complete incomplete tasks. I have about 10 as of now

Same here :)

woah nice explanation man! thank you so much!

np

One thing that I like to use is to set up a 'test/debug' mode for my code using a boolean switch. Basically declared a globally available boolean, I like to stick it in a static class, then just make a bunch of 'if' statements throughout your code to output information as needed. Example:

public class Solution {
    static class test{
        static boolean flag = true;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        BufferedReader r = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
        ArrayList<String> list = new ArrayList<>();
        String[] testVals = {"one","two","three","four","five","six","seven","eight","nine","ten"};
        for (int i = 0; i < 10; i++){
            if(test.flag) list.add(testVals[i]);
            else list.add(r.readLine());
        }

        ArrayList<String> result = doubleValues(list);

        for (String x:result) {
            System.out.println(x);
        }
    }

    public static ArrayList<String> doubleValues(ArrayList<String> list) {
        ArrayList<String> temp = new ArrayList<>();
        temp.addAll(list);
        if(test.flag) System.out.println(temp);
        for (int i = 0; i < temp.size();i++){

            String tempString = temp.get(i);
            if(test.flag) System.out.println("Loop cycle " + i + ". Adding string '" + tempString + "' into list");
            list.add(list.indexOf(tempString), tempString);
            if(test.flag) System.out.println("list now: " + list);
        }
        return list;
    }
}

This is a task (0717) that just takes 10 strings from the user, stores in a list, and then uses the doubleValues method to duplicate each one in the list. At the top is where i declared the global boolean to use. The first place I used my bool value is at line 11. If the flag is set to true it over rides the get user values and uses 10 hard coded values. This is so everytime I wanted to test the code I didn't have to enter 10 values. Then at lines 25, 29, and 31 you will see 'if' statements that use the flag. When it is set to true these lines activate and I can step through the output to see what is happening in the code. When you have identified all the problems and the code is working according to task conditions, just set the value to false and all that extra information will be shut off. Your task can then successfully be verified. Try to use this along with what Olef explained and these should cut down on the time you spend trying to find the few errors that will occur.

Damn Guadalupe, where are you learning all this stuff? I'm very open to resource recommendations and I think CodeGym should let you write a debugging article. Thank you as always friend!

This one I came up with on my own, sort of. I used to write sys.out statements all through my code back when I first started learning. It was the best way for me to figure out what was going on, because stepping through the code in my head or writing it on a piece of paper was time consuming. Those extra lines are auto-fails on most tasks, so I had to remove them all when I was complete. So when I would do this, every now and then I would fail a part of verification and not know why. Because i got rid of all the 'debug' output, I then had to add it all back(i did start commenting in/out these instead of deleting after a few times doing this). This started to become time consuming too, so I came up with the idea of doing it this way. I have used Visual Studio with C# and VS's debug mechanism has a native way to output data to console that gets ignored when compiled. Instead of using 'sys.out.println' for debug output, in VS you would use debug.println. IntelliJ doesn't do this but I came up with my way because I wanted to have this happen. It is close enough and helped me alot.

So what would you do if you want to step into the entire code from the example above? is there away to do that? if i tried to do a break pint in the main method, and it didn't work. Intelij used to have an easy step into code than now.

hey Guadalupe, off topic. i just want to know if i should avail a premium subscription if i add codegym plug in in dwsktop intellij. coz it seems like it. i tried and only few task are available others ask for subscription unlike here on android which is the only thing unavailable is the video part

A subscription allows you to download all the tasks directly to intellij and pass them in from there, but that doesn't mean you can't just copy + paste the task code in and use intelliJ to solve the task and then copy the solution.

i cant copy paste since the web version also ask for subs, so maybe ill just continue using phone. thanks

You don't have to specifically "copy and paste" to copy the code into intelliJ and back into codegym. I still think your coding will speed up, as well as your ability to locate and squash bugs, with IntelliJ enough that it will still be faster to do it that way.