A Visualization System for Animated Parallel Fortran Traces

According to Bates, Wileden, and Lesser the term programming error describes situations where a program''s actual behavior diverges from what was intended by the programmer. Such errors are often referred to as bugs, and debugging is the isolation and explanation of these derivations in program behavior. Sequential debugging tends to proceed in a cyclic fashion. Once an error has been detected, the programmer postulates a possible cause, then utilizes various information-gathering techniques in an effort to confirm or reject the hypothesis. The cyclic process of postulation followed by testing and re-execution continues until the error is isolated. This procedure works in sequential programs because program state changes deterministically; i.e., the same sequence of states will be repeated in subsequent program runs on identical input.