This was previously part of `asking-good-questions`.

We may decide that this should live on as a separate document about how to debug on ones own.

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+## Researching the question
+While we're always happy to help, learning the same skills that we use to answer your questions will help you become a stronger developer. These are some of the steps we take when answering questions:
+
+* Reading the official documentation for whatever library you're working with
+* Use a debugger to inspect your code
+* Examine the traceback when your code raises an exception
+* Do some research online - for example, on Stack Overflow
+* Read the source code for whatever you're working with
+
+Essentially, doing your research is the first step towards a solution to any problem.
+If your problem isn't extremely general, we're going to be doing exactly these steps ourselves when helping you, so doing the legwork beforehand saves everyone a lot of time.
+
+If none of the above steps help you or you're not sure how to do some them, feel free to ask us for help.
+
+
+# Examining Tracebacks
+
+Usually, the first sign of trouble is that when you run your code, it raises an exception.
+For beginning programmers, the traceback that's generated for the exception may feel overwhelming and discouraging at first.
+However, in time, most developers start to appreciate the extensive information contained in the traceback as it helps them track down the error in their code.
+So, don't panic and take a moment to carefully review the information provided to you.
+
+### Reading the Traceback
+
+```py
+Traceback (most recent call last):
+  File "my_python_file.py", line 6, in <module>
+    spam = division(a=10, b=0)
+  File "my_python_file.py", line 2, in division
+    answer = a / b
+ZeroDivisionError: division by zero
+```
+
+In general, the best strategy is to read the traceback from bottom to top.
+As you can see in the example above, the last line of the traceback contains the actual exception that was raised by your code.
+In this case, `ZeroDivisionError: division by zero`, clearly indicates the problem: We're trying to divide by zero somewhere in our code and that obviously can't be right.
+However, while we now know which exception was raised, we still need to trace the exception back to the error in our code.
+
+To do so, we turn to the lines above the exception.
+Reading from bottom to top again, we first encounter the line where the exception was raised: `answer = a / b`.
+Directly above it, we can see that this line of code was `line 2` of the file `my_python_file.py` and that it's in the scope of the function `division`.
+At this point, it's a good idea to inspect the code referenced here to see if we can spot an obvious mistake:
+
+```py
+# Python Code
+1| def division(a, b):
+2|    answer = a / b
+3|    return answer
+```
+
+Unfortunately, there's no obvious mistake in the code at this point, although one thing we do see here is that this function divides `a` by `b` and that the exception will only occur if `b` is somehow assigned the numeric value `0`.
+
+Keeping that observation in the back of our minds, we continue reading the traceback from bottom to top. The next thing we encounter is `spam = division(a=10, b=0)` from `line 6` of the file `my_python_file.py`.
+In this case, `<module>` tells us that the code is in the global scope of that file.
+While it's already clear from the traceback what's going wrong here, we're passing `b=0` to the function `division`, inspecting the code shows us the same:
+
+```python
+5| spam = division(a=10, b=0)
+6| print(spam)
+```
+
+We have now traced back the exception to a line of code calling the division function with a divisor of `0`.
+Obviously, this is a simplified example, but the exact same steps apply to more complex situations as well.
+
+### Syntax Errors: The Error is Sometimes in the Line Before the Error Message
+
+Sometimes, the actual error is in the line just before the one referenced in the traceback. To get help with syntax errors, provide a few lines before and after the one shown in the error message.
+
+
+### Exceptions from External Packages
+
+If you encounter an exception specific to an external module or package, it's usually a good idea to check the documentation of that package to see if the exception is documented.
+Another option is to paste a part of the traceback, usually the last line, into your favorite search engine to see if anyone else has encountered a similar problem.
+More often than not, you will be able to find a solution to your problem this way.