ABSTRACT
Some books suggest that software should be well-designed, carefully written, and never debugged. These books do not say anything about debugging. From my experience writing programs, working with students, and talking to people in the software industry, debugging is difficult to avoid completely, even when software is planned and written carefully. In some ways, debugging is like editing an article. It is very difficult to write a good article without any editing. Even though debugging is difficult to avoid completely, it should not be relied upon. Experienced programmers carefully prevent bugs from happening and detect them as early as possible.
