What is the primary purpose of debugging?

• A. To optimize performance of code
• B. To locate and fix errors
• C. To document code
• D. To compile the program

Answer: (B)

Debugging is about making sure a program works correctly by finding where things go wrong and fixing them. When code has bugs, it can crash, give wrong results, or behave in unexpected ways. Through debugging you locate the exact part of the code causing the issue, understand why it’s happening, and verify that your fix actually resolves it. Using tools like breakpoints, variable checks, and stepping through code helps you see how data changes and how the logic flows, so you can pinpoint faulty assumptions or logic errors. The goal is to correct these problems so the program produces the right outputs for different inputs.

While improving performance, documenting code, or compiling are important tasks, they are not the primary focus of debugging.