### Step 3: Interpreting the Gild Debug View

The Gild Debug View was briefly discussed in the section "The Gild Perspective: Features>The Gild Debug View". Now that we are debugging a program, the view presents us with some information. It is important to understand that information:

Basically, the Gild Debug View gives us a listing of all of the variables that are currently visible to the program, and their values.

In the above image, we can see three variables, `powerOfTwo`, `args`, and `i`. The image to the left of the name of the variable gives us some information about how the variable was declared. In this example, the diamond beside `powerOfTwo` tells us that this variable was declared as `protected` within the `PowerOfTwo` class; the 's' tells us that it is a `static` field of`PowerOfTwo`. The circle beside `args` and `i` tells us that these two variables are `local` to the method or block of code that is currently running.

On the right-hand side of the variable names and the '=' sign, we can see the variable's type and value. If the variable is a basic data type (as are `powerOfTwo` and `i`) then only the value is displayed. If the variable is a complex data type, such as an Object or and array (as is `args`) then the data type is displayed along with a unique id. The id is there so that the computer can distinguish between two different objects of the same type (it is the debugger’s interpretation of a reference).

Now, we can continue to use the Gild Debugger to understand what is wrong with our code.

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