I fully agree with all of this for code. However I have often thought the same techniques and mental model approach for debugging any complex system could be bo

I fully agree with all of this for code. However I have often thought the same techniques and mental model approach for debugging any complex system could be boiled down. I also attempted to write a course along the same lines and kept throwing it away. In addition to your steps though, I often include a hypothesis combined with various likelihood probabilities (sure there COULD be a JVM bug, but is it likely?), and I attack highest probabilities first.