Unfolding State Changes via Live State-First Debugging

Explore a novel debugging paradigm called live state-first debugging in this 30-minute conference talk from ACM SIGPLAN. Discover how this approach reveals program state changes without requiring logs or statement-level breakpoints, potentially streamlining the debugging process for web-based GUI applications. Learn about Unfold, an implementation of this paradigm that displays a timeline of changed UI states, corresponding code causing those changes, and automatic replays of user interaction traces after code edits. Gain insights from a preliminary user study demonstrating the potential benefits of live state-first debugging in locating GUI application bugs more efficiently. Presented by Ruanqianqian (Lisa) Huang, Philip Guo, and Sorin Lerner, this talk offers a fresh perspective on debugging techniques and their impact on programmer productivity.