Reading & Debugging Code
category
Reading and debugging code is the ability to trace through existing code to understand what it does, identify where a discrepancy between intended and actual behavior originates, and apply systematic diagnostic methods — print statements, variable inspection, step-through debugging, error message interpretation — to isolate and correct the specific line or logic error responsible for a failure.
Role
In the era of AI-generated code, the ability to read and debug code has become more important than the ability to write it from scratch: tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude generate functional code rapidly, but the person who cannot read what was generated cannot evaluate whether it is correct, cannot modify it for their specific context, and cannot diagnose why it fails. Most people treat coding as an either-or skill — either you can write it or you cannot — without recognizing that reading literacy (which requires far less time to develop) provides the majority of the practical value of programming literacy for non-engineers.