Build Your Debugging Skills


Book Description

A single error in a line of code can cause a computer program to go haywire or stop working entirely. Luckily coding has a process for dealing with errors: debugging. Debugging consists of finding and fixing errors in code. You don't have to work as a coder to develop your debugging skills, though. The simple activities in this book help readers develop their logic skills and an eagle eye for spotting errors, both of which are indispensible in coding and helpful in many other areas as well.




Debugging


Book Description

When the pressure is on to resolve an elusive software or hardware glitch, what’s needed is a cool head courtesy of a set of rules guaranteed to work on any system, in any circumstance. Written in a frank but engaging style, this book provides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. Recognized tech expert and author David Agans changes the way you think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix. Agans identifies nine simple, practical rules that are applicable to any software application or hardware system, which can help detect any bug, no matter how tricky or obscure. Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, Debugging shows you how to: Understand the system: how perceiving the ""roadmap"" can hasten your journey Quit thinking and look: when hands-on investigation can’t be avoided Isolate critical factors: why changing one element at a time can be an essential tool Keep an audit trail: how keeping a record of the debugging process can win the day Whether the system or program you’re working on has been designed wrong, built wrong, or used wrong, Debugging helps you think correctly about bugs, so the problems virtually reveal themselves.




Effective Debugging


Book Description

Every software developer and IT professional understands the crucial importance of effective debugging. Often, debugging consumes most of a developer’s workday, and mastering the required techniques and skills can take a lifetime. In Effective Debugging, Diomidis Spinellis helps experienced programmers accelerate their journey to mastery, by systematically categorizing, explaining, and illustrating the most useful debugging methods, strategies, techniques, and tools. Drawing on more than thirty-five years of experience, Spinellis expands your arsenal of debugging techniques, helping you choose the best approaches for each challenge. He presents vendor-neutral, example-rich advice on general principles, high-level strategies, concrete techniques, high-efficiency tools, creative tricks, and the behavioral traits associated with effective debugging. Spinellis’s 66 expert techniques address every facet of debugging and are illustrated with step-by-step instructions and actual code. He addresses the full spectrum of problems that can arise in modern software systems, especially problems caused by complex interactions among components and services running on hosts scattered around the planet. Whether you’re debugging isolated runtime errors or catastrophic enterprise system failures, this guide will help you get the job done—more quickly, and with less pain. Key features include High-level strategies and methods for addressing diverse software failures Specific techniques to apply when programming, compiling, and running code Better ways to make the most of your debugger General-purpose skills and tools worth investing in Advanced ideas and techniques for escaping dead-ends and the maze of complexity Advice for making programs easier to debug Specialized approaches for debugging multithreaded, asynchronous, and embedded code Bug avoidance through improved software design, construction, and management




The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse


Book Description

Debugging is crucial to successful software development, but even many experienced programmers find it challenging. Sophisticated debugging tools are available, yet it may be difficult to determine which features are useful in which situations. The Art of Debugging is your guide to making the debugging process more efficient and effective. The Art of Debugging illustrates the use three of the most popular debugging tools on Linux/Unix platforms: GDB, DDD, and Eclipse. The text-command based GDB (the GNU Project Debugger) is included with most distributions. DDD is a popular GUI front end for GDB, while Eclipse provides a complete integrated development environment. In addition to offering specific advice for debugging with each tool, authors Norm Matloff and Pete Salzman cover general strategies for improving the process of finding and fixing coding errors, including how to: –Inspect variables and data structures –Understand segmentation faults and core dumps –Know why your program crashes or throws exceptions –Use features like catchpoints, convenience variables, and artificial arrays –Avoid common debugging pitfalls Real world examples of coding errors help to clarify the authors’ guiding principles, and coverage of complex topics like thread, client-server, GUI, and parallel programming debugging will make you even more proficient. You'll also learn how to prevent errors in the first place with text editors, compilers, error reporting, and static code checkers. Whether you dread the thought of debugging your programs or simply want to improve your current debugging efforts, you'll find a valuable ally in The Art of Debugging.




Debugging Teams


Book Description

In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.




Advanced R


Book Description

An Essential Reference for Intermediate and Advanced R Programmers Advanced R presents useful tools and techniques for attacking many types of R programming problems, helping you avoid mistakes and dead ends. With more than ten years of experience programming in R, the author illustrates the elegance, beauty, and flexibility at the heart of R. The book develops the necessary skills to produce quality code that can be used in a variety of circumstances. You will learn: The fundamentals of R, including standard data types and functions Functional programming as a useful framework for solving wide classes of problems The positives and negatives of metaprogramming How to write fast, memory-efficient code This book not only helps current R users become R programmers but also shows existing programmers what’s special about R. Intermediate R programmers can dive deeper into R and learn new strategies for solving diverse problems while programmers from other languages can learn the details of R and understand why R works the way it does.




The Effective Engineer


Book Description

Introducing The Effective Engineer--the only book designed specifically for today's software engineers, based on extensive interviews with engineering leaders at top tech companies, and packed with hundreds of techniques to accelerate your career.




Code Simplicity


Book Description

Good software design is simple and easy to understand. Unfortunately, the average computer program today is so complex that no one could possibly comprehend how all the code works. This concise guide helps you understand the fundamentals of good design through scientific laws—principles you can apply to any programming language or project from here to eternity. Whether you’re a junior programmer, senior software engineer, or non-technical manager, you’ll learn how to create a sound plan for your software project, and make better decisions about the pattern and structure of your system. Discover why good software design has become the missing science Understand the ultimate purpose of software and the goals of good design Determine the value of your design now and in the future Examine real-world examples that demonstrate how a system changes over time Create designs that allow for the most change in the environment with the least change in the software Make easier changes in the future by keeping your code simpler now Gain better knowledge of your software’s behavior with more accurate tests




Debugging Windows Programs


Book Description

For professional software developers, debugging is a way of life. This book is the definitive guide to Windows debugging, providing developers with the strategies and techniques they need to fulfill one of their most important responsibilities efficiently and effectively. Debugging Windows Programs shows readers how to prevent bugs by taking full advantage of the Visual C++ development tools and writing code in a way that makes certain types of bugs impossible. They also will learn how to reveal bugs with debugging statements that force bugs to expose themselves when the program is executed, and how to make the most of debugging tools and features available in Windows, Visual C++, MFC, and ATL. The authors provide specific solutions to the most common debugging problems, including memory corruption, resource leaks, stack problems, release build problems, finding crash locations, and multithreading problems. These essential topics are covered: The debugging process Writing C++ code for debugging Strategically using assertions, trace statements, and exceptions Windows postmortem debugging using Dr. Watson and MAP files Using the Visual C++ debugger Debugging memory Debugging multithreaded programs Debugging COM Each chapter provides developers with exactly what they need to master the subject and improve development productivity and software quality. Comprehensive, current, and practical, Debugging Windows Programs helps developers understand the debugging process and make the most of the Visual C++ debugging tools. 020170238XB04062001




Linux Device Drivers


Book Description

Device drivers literally drive everything you're interested in--disks, monitors, keyboards, modems--everything outside the computer chip and memory. And writing device drivers is one of the few areas of programming for the Linux operating system that calls for unique, Linux-specific knowledge. For years now, programmers have relied on the classic Linux Device Drivers from O'Reilly to master this critical subject. Now in its third edition, this bestselling guide provides all the information you'll need to write drivers for a wide range of devices.Over the years the book has helped countless programmers learn: how to support computer peripherals under the Linux operating system how to develop and write software for new hardware under Linux the basics of Linux operation even if they are not expecting to write a driver The new edition of Linux Device Drivers is better than ever. The book covers all the significant changes to Version 2.6 of the Linux kernel, which simplifies many activities, and contains subtle new features that can make a driver both more efficient and more flexible. Readers will find new chapters on important types of drivers not covered previously, such as consoles, USB drivers, and more.Best of all, you don't have to be a kernel hacker to understand and enjoy this book. All you need is an understanding of the C programming language and some background in Unix system calls. And for maximum ease-of-use, the book uses full-featured examples that you can compile and run without special hardware.Today Linux holds fast as the most rapidly growing segment of the computer market and continues to win over enthusiastic adherents in many application areas. With this increasing support, Linux is now absolutely mainstream, and viewed as a solid platform for embedded systems. If you're writing device drivers, you'll want this book. In fact, you'll wonder how drivers are ever written without it.




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