Effective Debugging

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 failuresSpecific techniques to apply when programming, compiling, and running codeBetter ways to make the most of your debuggerGeneral-purpose skills and tools worth investing inAdvanced ideas and techniques for escaping dead-ends and the maze of complexityAdvice for making programs easier to debugSpecialized approaches for debugging multithreaded, asynchronous, and embedded codeBug avoidance through improved software design, construction, and management