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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
From the creator of the GNU Data Display Debugger (DDD)..., July 26, 2006
"Why programs fail" attempts to provide a systematic approach to finding, reproducing, and fixing programming errors, with a strong focus on the automation of many debugging techniques. Zeller covers the whole debugging process:
- Problem-tracking systems are discussed, not only as tools for tracking and managing problem reports, but also as valuable idea repositories and requirements management systems.
- You will also find advice on how to set up automated tests that support debugging tasks.
- Apparently straightforward, reproducing problems can be harder that it seems, as "heisenbugs" testify (i.e. when debugging tools interfere with the problem so that it disappears when it is being observed).
- Delta debugging, an interesting application of the classical divide-and-conquer strategy, provides an automated method to simplify test cases (and focus on the truly relevant part of the problem).
- Applying the scientific method is the right way to debug (i.e. reasoning about programs to create hypotheses and performing experiments to validate or discard those hypotheses). Here, the use of a debugging logbook helps to make debugging explicit by writing down all hypotheses and observations.
- Plenty of techniques for creating hypothesis and determining the failure cause of an observed problem are covered, from static analysis tools and introducing assertions, to experimental techniques that try to make debugging more efficient.
"Why programs fail" is outstanding. Many interesting (and practical) ideas are explored. If you would like to improve your detective skills, this book is highly recommended.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Good material, crappy revisioning, September 17, 2009
This review is from: Why Programs Fail, Second Edition: A Guide to Systematic Debugging (Paperback)
This book is indeed a solid reference on a whole new approach to debugging, and I recommend it to every professional programmer.
I just wish they did a better revision work before publishing it, as scarcely past the third chapter you will have already ran into half a dozen bizarre errors. Misplaced or missing words are just the beginning; wait until you run into the misplaced paragraphs...
None of the errors take away this book's value, but thet are sort of a black eye in an otherwise beautiful figure.
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6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Elevate your Debugging, August 25, 2008
Andreas Zeller created the GNU Data Display Debugger. That
fact set my expectations for this book. I was not
disappointed. Being a developer for over 15 years, I was
pleasantly surprised at the advances in debugging presented
in this book.
The great benefit of this book is that it uses the
scientific method to create a formal discipline for
debugging. This discipline can be automated in ways that
were unthought-of until recently. One example of this is
the DDCHANGE plug-in for Eclipse that automatically
identifies which of multiple code changes has introduced a
given bug.
I found no major faults in this book. The author's style
of writing is very enjoyable. The only thing I'd change is
to drop the second chapter as it contains material on defect
tracking that is covered elsewhere (unlike the rest of the
material where this book is pretty much the sole source of
information).
This is a fabulous book that any serious developer should
read.
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