Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging - Softcover

Zeller, Andreas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1558608664 ISBN 13: 9781558608665

Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann, 2005

Synopsis

Why Programs Fail is about bugs in computer programs, how to find them, how to reproduce them, and how to fix them in such a way that they do not occur anymore. This is the first comprehensive book on systematic debugging and covers a wide range of tools and techniques ranging from hands-on observation to fully automated diagnoses, and includes instructions for building automated debuggers. This discussion is built upon a solid theory of how failures occur, rather than relying on seat-of-the-pants techniques, which are of little help with large software systems or to those learning to program. The author, Andreas Zeller, is well known in the programming community for creating the GNU Data Display Debugger (DDD), a tool that visualizes the data structures of a program while it is running.

About this title

Review

"James Madison wrote: 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary.' If he lived today, Madison might have written: 'If software developers were angels, debugging would be unnecessary.' Most of us, however, make mistakes, and many of us even make errors while designing and writing software. Our mistakes need to be found and fixed, an activity called debugging that originated with the first computer programs. Today every computer program written is also debugged, but debugging is not a widely studied or taught skill. Few books, beyond this one, present a systematic approach to finding and fixing programming errors." - from the foreword by James Larus, Microsoft Research "Andreas Zeller seeks to equip you with a comprehensive arsenal of techniques and the appropriate mind-sets for employing them." Rick Wayne, Software Development, January 2006

About the Author

Andreas Zeller is a computer science professor at Saarland University, Germany. His research centers on programmer productivity: What can be done to ease the life and work of programmers? Among Linux and Unix programmers Zeller is best known for GNU DDD, a debugger front-end with built-in data visualization. Among academics and advanced professionals, Zeller is best known for delta debugging, a technique that automatically isolates failure causes for computer programs. His work is equally divided between teaching, reading, writing, programming, and flying back and forth across the Atlantic. He lives with his family in Saarbraken, on the German border with France.

Edition details

• Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1558608664
• ISBN 13: 9781558608665
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 480