Better ways to help students debug

[Jaqster]

Opening an issue to spark some brainstorming around ways we can better help students debug large programs.

From an educator -
Blockly does not mark all errors with a !. Run time errors never tell you where it happened. You may need to switch to TypeScript to locate the error. If you need to use TypeScript to find the error just don’t edit the code too.

Where is that happening?
Sometimes it seems clear there is code doing something wrong but you can’t find it. In general, you want to arrange your code so that you can find what you are looking for. Our kids won’t do that. A stray long forgotten forever loop is often made invisible in MakeCode.

You can also use the - button to zoom all the way out to find code that is way out away from the other code. The canvas can be made huge no matter how little code you have and the kids will often get some code way off screen.

If you just can’t seem to find the definition of a function you can try to right click a calling block and select go to definition, this is supposed to scroll your screen to the definition. You still have to search the screen to find it. It can also be buried under other code.

Keep an eye on the scroll bars for hints that code is hidden in a far away corner of the canvas.

Consider right clicking the background selecting Collapse Blocks then selecting Format Code. This will put all the code into a small area making it easier to browse it all.