Debug It!


Book Description

Provides information on the techniques of debugging software and code.




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.




How Debuggers Work


Book Description

A total guide to debuggers: what they do, how they work, and how to use them to produce better programs "Debuggers are the magnifying glass, the microscope, the logic analyzer, the profiler, and the browser with which a program can be examined."-Jonathan B. Rosenberg Debuggers are an indispensable tool in the development process. In fact, during the course of the average software project, more hours are spent debugging software than in compiling code. Yet, not many programmers really know how to constructively interpret the results they get back from debuggers. And even fewer know what makes these complex suites of algorithms and data structures tick. Now in this extremely accessible guide, Jonathan B. Rosenberg demystifies debuggers for programmers and shows them how to make better use of debuggers in their next projects. Taking a hands-on, problem-solving approach to a complex subject, Rosenberg explains how debuggers work and why programmers use them. Most importantly, he provides practical discussions of debugger algorithms and procedures for their use, accompanied by many practical examples. The author also discusses a wide variety of systems applications, from Microsoft's Win32 debug API to a large parallel architecture. Visit our Web site at: http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/




Debug Your Mental Software


Book Description

Still making the same old mental mistakes over and over again? Isn't it time to debug your mental software? Using the simple tools in this book, you'll learn how to: 1) debug your mental software to eliminate the mental barriers to your success, 2) upgrad




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 by Thinking


Book Description

Debugging by Thinking: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach is the first book to apply the wisdom of six disciplines-logic, mathematics, psychology, safety analysis, computer science, and engineering-to the problem of debugging. It uses the methods of literary detectives such as Sherlock Holmes, the techniques of mathematical problem solving, the results of research into the cognitive psychology of human error, the root cause analyses of safety experts, the compiler analyses of computer science, and the processes of modern engineering to define a systematic approach to identifying and correcting software errors. * Language Independent Methods: Examples are given in Java and C++ * Complete source code shows actual bugs, rather than contrived examples * Examples are accessible with no more knowledge than a course in Data Structures and Algorithms requires * A "thought process diary" shows how the author actually resolved the problems as they occurred




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.




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




Debugging Your Brain


Book Description

Your brain is a complex system. Patch the software that runs in your mind.




Systems Performance


Book Description

The Complete Guide to Optimizing Systems Performance Written by the winner of the 2013 LISA Award for Outstanding Achievement in System Administration Large-scale enterprise, cloud, and virtualized computing systems have introduced serious performance challenges. Now, internationally renowned performance expert Brendan Gregg has brought together proven methodologies, tools, and metrics for analyzing and tuning even the most complex environments. Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud focuses on Linux(R) and Unix(R) performance, while illuminating performance issues that are relevant to all operating systems. You'll gain deep insight into how systems work and perform, and learn methodologies for analyzing and improving system and application performance. Gregg presents examples from bare-metal systems and virtualized cloud tenants running Linux-based Ubuntu(R), Fedora(R), CentOS, and the illumos-based Joyent(R) SmartOS(TM) and OmniTI OmniOS(R). He systematically covers modern systems performance, including the "traditional" analysis of CPUs, memory, disks, and networks, and new areas including cloud computing and dynamic tracing. This book also helps you identify and fix the "unknown unknowns" of complex performance: bottlenecks that emerge from elements and interactions you were not aware of. The text concludes with a detailed case study, showing how a real cloud customer issue was analyzed from start to finish. Coverage includes - Modern performance analysis and tuning: terminology, concepts, models, methods, and techniques - Dynamic tracing techniques and tools, including examples of DTrace, SystemTap, and perf - Kernel internals: uncovering what the OS is doing - Using system observability tools, interfaces, and frameworks - Understanding and monitoring application performance - Optimizing CPUs: processors, cores, hardware threads, caches, interconnects, and kernel scheduling - Memory optimization: virtual memory, paging, swapping, memory architectures, busses, address spaces, and allocators - File system I/O, including caching - Storage devices/controllers, disk I/O workloads, RAID, and kernel I/O - Network-related performance issues: protocols, sockets, interfaces, and physical connections - Performance implications of OS and hardware-based virtualization, and new issues encountered with cloud computing - Benchmarking: getting accurate results and avoiding common mistakes This guide is indispensable for anyone who operates enterprise or cloud environments: system, network, database, and web admins; developers; and other professionals. For students and others new to optimization, it also provides exercises reflecting Gregg's extensive instructional experience.