An approach is provided for predicting an exception during a debugging of software code before the debugging encounters the exception. A number of lines X is received. During a debugging of a line number L of the code, upcoming lines consisting of line numbers L+1 through L+X are executed. Based on the execution of the upcoming lines, the exception is predicted to be encountered at line number M, which is within a range of line numbers L+1 through L+X. During the debugging of the line number L, and based on the prediction and the line number being within the range, a warning is displayed that the exception is to be encountered at line number M.