Throughout this section, we touched upon three unique types of process we contribute to overall application testing. Distinctively labeled as debugging, tracing, and profiling, these processes provide a unique and remarkably informative perspective on our application inner bits. While tracing and profiling gather application performance and path-of-execution data for us in a sort of hands-free mode, debugging allows for a unique experience of tapping into a specific bit of code. Whether we are a seasonal or a full-time software developer, debugging, tracing, and profiling are absolutely essential skills to master. Without them, resolving the really nasty bugs or writing performance-optimized applications becomes a whole new challenge.
Moving forward, we will take a closer look at the landscape and available choices around PHP...