Mastering Debugging in Board: A Core Skill for Developers

Leone Scaburri · January 27

Featuring: Community Captain Leone Scaburri, Solution Architect within the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Professional Services, Board

Today, we’re welcoming one of our 2025 Q1 Captains —Leone Scaburri— as he shares his insights on why debugging is important as a core skill for Board developers!

Leone has been with Board for seven years embarking on a journey that has seen him into various roles within the Professional Services and Product Support teams. Today, he serves as a Solution Architect within the Center of Excellence (CoE) for Professional Services, where he leads a global community of solution architects spanning all Board regions.

As developers working with Board, we often see questions in community forums or support requests that sound like, “Hey, my procedure isn’t working, I’m getting an error message. Is something broken?” While these questions are valid, they frequently lack the depth of information needed to diagnose issues effectively.

This article discusses a critical skill that every developer should cultivate: debugging.

Why Debugging Matters in Board Development

Here’s why becoming proficient at debugging is essential for application developers:

Hands-On Learning and Knowledge Building: Every debugging session teaches you more about the inner workings of Board and your application’s configuration. As you work through issues, you’ll build up a mental repository of knowledge. This accumulated understanding will increase your confidence and capability to handle future problems.
Problem-Solving Independence: Debugging skills allow you to troubleshoot and resolve issues on your own. This independence puts you in control of your own timelines, making you more effective as a developer by reducing downtime spent waiting for external help. In an environment like Board, where multiple procedures, data flows, and configurations can interact in complex ways, this self-sufficiency is invaluable.
Improved Question Quality: When you do eventually need help, debugging improves the quality of your questions. Rather than asking general questions like, “Why isn’t this working?”, you can specify your issue, steps taken, and observations more clearly. Well-formed questions often lead to faster and more accurate answers from the community or support.

Debugging: An Essential Skill Throughout Your Career

Junior developers might think they run into problems all the time because they are not very experienced yet, but this is far from the truth. You will be debugging until the day you retire. Many developers believe that debugging becomes less necessary with experience, but this is not true.

Building a Mental Model of Board’s Architecture

To debug effectively, start by developing a clear mental model of the Board application’s architecture. Here are key aspects to focus on:

Understand Core Components: Know how data models, procedures, layout execution, and security settings interact.
Identify Critical Areas for Debugging: Familiarize yourself with the application’s flow, dependencies, and execution order. Recognize which components are most likely to encounter issues.
Reduce Problems to Minimal Terms: Narrow down the issue by isolating specific elements. For instance, if you suspect a procedure issue, try breaking down the procedure into steps to see where it fails.

Methodical Debugging Approach for Board Applications

When debugging, it’s essential to approach issues systematically rather than randomly testing theories. Here’s a suggested approach for debugging in Board:

Formulate Hypotheses: Based on your understanding of Board’s architecture, make a logical hypothesis about what could be causing the problem. For instance, if a procedure is failing, could it be due to unexpected data input or misconfiguration in procedure settings?
Use the Right Tools:

Procedure Debugger: This tool can help trace the steps within a procedure, enabling you to identify the exact step causing an error.
Log Files: Board’s logs contain detailed information about application activity. Learning to read and interpret these logs will help pinpoint the error’s origin.

Isolate the step: Start by identifying which part of the Procedure might be causing the issue. Is it related to a misconfigured dataflow or a wrong selection?
Avoid Random Testing: While it can be tempting to try various fixes at random this approach is rarely efficient. Testing arbitrary solutions without a clear hypothesis leads to wasted time and often fails to uncover the root cause.

Asking for Help the Right Way

In cases where you cannot resolve an issue independently, it’s perfectly okay to seek help. However, ensure that you’ve performed initial debugging and can provide specific details. When you ask, structure your question to include:

A concise description of the issue
Steps you’ve taken to investigate it
Any relevant logs or error messages
Your hypothesis on what might be causing the issue

When you ask well-formulated questions, you’ll likely receive more targeted responses, which will help you learn from the solution and apply it to future debugging challenges.

Debugging as a Path to Mastery in Board

Developing strong debugging skills is not only about resolving specific issues; it’s about mastering the craft of Board application development. Every debugging session is an opportunity to deepen your understanding of the platform and strengthen your problem-solving abilities. Remember, no developer learned to solve complex issues by constantly asking others—they did it by engaging with problems, iterating, and learning as they went.

In summary, make debugging a core part of your skill set in Board development. While it might seem slower at first, it builds the foundation of expertise that will make you a far more effective developer in the long run.

Thank you, Leone, for the knowledge you've shared as a Board Community Captain!

How have you used debugging as a skill during your Board experience? Help the Community improve by sharing your feedback in the comments below.

Omar · January 29

Thank you, Leone, for this great post! Debugging is an essential skill for every Board developer.

Taking a structured approach : checking logs, using the Procedure Debugger and breaking things down, has always helped to solve issues and better understand Board’s architecture.

A small tip: always check the documentation before diving into debugging! Many answers are already there, saving time and effort 😉