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Debugging is a generalized term which essentially means to step through a process in order to systematically eliminate errors. It takes on several different meanings depending on what you are debugging:

In programming, debugging is done when undesirable program execution or termination occurs. IE you may be coding a financial package for a bank and find that your depreciation portion of your package is computing incorrectly. You would then debug your code to find your math error that is causing the incorrect computation.

In IPL (initial program load) of an operating system, you would debug certain drivers, start-up programs, etc to figure out why the OS does not boot properly.

In hardware (a bit of a stretch, but still) you might debug why a computer does not load at all by replacing memory, then trying the boot sequence, seeing if there is a change, remove network card, try boot sequence, no change, etc until the machine boots properly.

The term originates in the early days of computers when computers were large monstrosities constructed of large vacuum tubes. It was common for actual physical insects (bugs) to cause problems with the machines, hence you would "debug" (literally!) the computer.

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10y ago

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