See buying choices for this item to see if it's one of the millions that are eligible for Amazon Prime.

17 used & new from $25.69

Have one to sell? Sell yours here

Tell the Publisher! I�d like to read this book on Kindle Don�t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems (Paperback)

by David J. Agans (Author) "This book tells you how to find out what's wrong with stuff, quick..." (more)
Key Phrases: read pulse, debug logs, breakout box, Check the Plug, New Hampshire, Betty Lou (more...)

4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

Available from these sellers.

4 new from $42.48 13 used from $25.69

Also Available in:	List Price:	Our Price:	Other Offers:
Paperback	$17.95	$16.15	31 used & new from $13.03

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving

by Morgan D. Jones

4.1 out of 5 stars (27) $10.88

The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse

by Norman Matloff

5.0 out of 5 stars (3) $34.77

Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction

by Steve McConnell

4.8 out of 5 stars (106) $31.49

Why Programs Fail, Second Edition: A Guide to Systematic Debugging

by Andreas Zeller

4.7 out of 5 stars (6) $53.95

Hacker's Delight

by Henry S. Warren

5.0 out of 5 stars (15) $43.99

› Explore similar items

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...get this book.Its stories and examples are amusing and instructive." -- Test & Measurement World

"..a short but invaluable work dedicated to helping you hunt down pesky problems online and off." -- New.Architect magazine, February 2003

"I have printed out his rules and expect I'll lend this book out frequently." -- Dr.Dobb's Journal,Gregory V. Wilson, San Francisco, CA Feb. 2003

"It's not often you find a classic,but I think I've found a new classic for software and computer hardware developers." -- Slashdot.com, David A.Wheeler

"Unlike most books about debugging, this book isn't a technical manual. It's easy to follow and logical approach and progression." -- IEEE Software magazine

..the book lays out sensible strategies and tactics, clearly based on years of experience and reflection. -- EDN Access October 3, 2002

Fun, charming, motivating, and instructive, Debugging is a good gift for your friendly computer fixer. -- GlobeTechology.com February 2003

Problem-solvers everywhere can benefit from this straight-forward guide to fixing glitches in systems and software. -- Richmond, VA TIMES-- Dispatch Dec. 16,2002

Written by an experienced, down-to-earth engineer, it offers exactly what's needed when stuck in the technology trenches-fast, street-smart advice. -- BIZLIFE June 2003

Product Description
When the pressure is on to root out 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, Debugging provides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. This book makes those shelves of application-specific debugging books (on C++, Perl, Java, etc.) obsolete. It changes the way readers think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix.

Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, the book shows readers 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

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

Paperback: 192 pages
Publisher: AMACOM; 1st edition (September 23, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0814471684
ISBN-13: 978-0814471685
Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.8 x 0.6 inches
Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces

Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (19 customer reviews)

Amazon.com Sales Rank: #759,168 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Inside This Book (learn more)

First Sentence:
This book tells you how to find out what's wrong with stuff, quick. Read the first page

Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
read pulse, debug logs, breakout box, logic analyzer, database machine, bad signals, bug report

Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Check the Plug, New Hampshire, Betty Lou, Murphy's Law

New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats

Citations (learn more)

This book cites 3 books:

Car Talk by Tom and Ray Magliozzi in Front Matter
The Elements of Style, Fourth Edition by William Strunk Jr. in Front Matter
Car Talk by Tom Magliozzi in Front Matter

Books on Related Topics (learn more)

The Complete Guide to Electronics Troubleshooting by James Perozzo

Discusses:

What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

	85% buy the item featured on this page: Debugging: The 9 Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems 4.8 out of 5 stars (19)
	7% buy The Art of Debugging with GDB, DDD, and Eclipse 5.0 out of 5 stars (3) $34.77
	3% buy The Developer's Guide to Debugging 4.7 out of 5 stars (10) $79.11
	2% buy Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction 4.8 out of 5 stars (106) $31.49

Explore similar items

Tags Customers Associate with This Product

(What's this?)

Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.

debug(2)

debugging(2)

engineering(1)

fix(1)

maybe(1)

problem-solving(1)

programming(1)

software(1)

See all 10 tags...

Help others find this product — tag it for Amazon search

No one has tagged this product for Amazon search yet. Why not be the first to suggest a search for which it should appear?

Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store

If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store. Learn more

Customer Reviews

19 Reviews

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

Average Customer Review

4.8 out of 5 stars (19 customer reviews)

Share your thoughts with other customers:

Create your own review

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars very useful and easy-to-read, June 3, 2003

By	Timur Shtatland (Melrose, MA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very useful for beginners and intermediate programmers. "Debugging" is full of practical advice on debugging in general. It is not tied to any particular programming language.

The book describes 9 main debugging "rules", and many smaller "sub-rules". The rules (such as "Make it fail" or "Quit thinking and look") and sub-rules (such as "Start from a known state" or "Build instrumentation in") are derived from common sense and years of experience. Many people know most of the rules, but perhaps do not systematically follow them. "Debugging" clarifies and makes a systematic review of the debugging practices, with examples taken from real life, simplified to remove the jargon.

The book is quite funny and makes enjoyable reading. I am looking forward to more: perhaps we can see more stories in the next edition, or in a companion volume, or on the debugging rules web site.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible for coaching as well as self-guided study., October 1, 2006

By	Christopher Wanko "-C" (Nutley, NJ USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)

If, after twelve years or so of work, you find yourself bringing junior team members along and filling the role of mentor or lead, you are expected to impart your accumulated experience and wisdom onto the newcomers, so that the hard-won lessons need not become a re-nvention of the wheel. The most common problem in doing this is succinctly and effectively communicating the messages. This book does exactly that, for debugging problems.

It's worth noting that the author is very careful to distinguish between troubleshooting and debugging. Getting to the root cause of a problem is debugging; fixing the painful symptom(s) is troubleshooting. The analogy used in the book is this: instead of wiping off the oil spots so you don't slip and fall, secure the machine with four bolts instead of two. Keeping the floor clean is troubleshooting. Securing the machine so it doesn't vibrate, loosen the fittings, and leak oil in the first place, is debugging.

Debugging is hard. It requires discipline, attention to detail, and patience. The toughest leap of faith for anyone trying to adhere to the system might be in slowing down and proceeding in a meticulous, measured fashion; however, it is almost always exactly what's required to zero in on a problem's root cause, and accomplish the job.

Mr. Agans liberally fills the book with real-life war stories of how each rules is applied (or not applied); in some instances he can detail a good story illustrating every single rule. The rules cover exactly enough ground, and are reinforced well by examples. There's absolutely no filler in this book, despite any incomprehsible claim to the contrary. In fact, one might well wish for more examples in order to help make the necessary analogies to someone else when teaching from this book.

Here's a good example. It's my own war story showing how I used the rules, and how I didn't...

... I was trying to figure out why a particular application wouldn't export output to Excel. It was an out-of-the-box feature from the vendor, but the application is extremely complex to configure and I'd misconfigured something somewhere (it has to be me, no one else was brave enough to touch this application).

I had been wrestling with it, trying this configuration file and that one, all to no avail. I finally broke down and emailed the vendor, who put e in touch with a support specialist.

At this point, I had been changing too many things at once (rule #5 violated), not keeping a good audit trail because I was moving too fast (rule #6 violated), and clearly not looking (rule #3 busted). The only rule I'd tried was #8 "Get a Fresh View". The tide turned.

We started from square one, and rule #1 "Understand the System" came into play. We walked over all the possibilities, listing where exporting to Excel lays in the application. This also helped us to narrow down our search (rule #4, "Divide and Conquer"). Next, we started changing one thing at a time (rule #5) while keeping a good audit trail of what worked or didn't (rule #6). At one point, we'd revisited a section of code that sparked something in my memory. We'd downloaded a fix and forgot to fully test it. It was integral to exporting to Excel, so I backed out the fix, and export to Excel ow worked. It turns out the fix solved one problem but broke exporting to Excel. We put the fix back in, saw the problem (rule #2 "Make it Fail"), and backed out the fix. Now we'd proven that we'd found the real culprit. The vendor investigated and shipped us a new patch that worked *and* didn't break anything else.

If I had to teach all that to someone, I'd end up making a far less effective book than this one. Mr. Agans has done all the hard work here, and now I can give this book to junior team members, quiz them after reading it, and relate our own issues with respect to a common approach and means of describing the situation. Without a doubt, a classic book and one that every single professional problem-solver should own, in any field that has a diagnostic component to it.

-Fred

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard-won experience explained well, November 21, 2002

By	Eddy Carroll (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

David Agans does a great job of explaining how to approach debugging as a science rather than an art. If you're a novice programmer, the information here will prove invaluable; discovering how to debug effectively on your own can take many years.

Experienced programmers may consider most of the rules to be obvious; however, those same programmers might be surprised to find how many of these obvious rules they neglect to follow. I've been debugging for more than 20 years, and still learnt some useful new tricks.

Peppered throughout the text are a large number of war stories from the author's own experience with embedded systems. As well as illustrating how to (and more commonly, how not to) approach a particular problem, these are all well written and often entertaining.

Some of my favourites: how wearing the wrong shirt to work caused a new video compression chip to crash; teenagers coming home from school subtly altering the behaviour of a video conferencing system; a vacuum cleaner that made the house lights flash on and off; a noisy read/write line that led a junior engineer to mistakenly redesign an entire co-processor memory circuit; and the self-test feature on an old Pong video game.

Although most examples are hardware related, the approach described can be applied to almost any problem; indeed, several of the examples used have nothing to do with computing.

This is not a large book, but it's well laid out, easy to follow, and doesn't talk down to the reader. It's also packed with enough meat to satisfy the hungriest of programmers. Highly recommended.

Comment Comment | Permalink | Was this review helpful to you? Yes No (Report this)

Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review

› See all 19 customer reviews...

Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Principle Focused: Concisely Expressed, Broadly Applicable
Troubleshooting and debugging is one of those life activities that we tap into relentlessly - yet never learn about in a structured manner. Read more

Published 1 month ago by D. Sanoy

4.0 out of 5 stars Debugging The 9 Indispensable Rules...
-==Pro's==-
-Clear writing style, with a touch of good humor.

-Solid rules that are easy to remember, apply, and follow. Read more

Published 3 months ago by Jesse R. Ziegler

5.0 out of 5 stars Lotsa bang for the buck
A very inexpensive book relative to the amount of "in the trenches" wisdom it contains. This book should be required reading for all undergraduates in engineering and the... Read more

Published 7 months ago by M. Soyka

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent description of a debugging process
One of my Junior Engineers asked me some months ago about my process for debugging. This book gave him a much better answer than I did at the time. Read more

Published 8 months ago by Ben Blaukopf

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent and practical book on debugging
This is an excellent book on debugging. Whether you're debugging mechanical systems, electrical circuits, or software, the methodology presented is extremely practical and... Read more

Published 23 months ago by Jason E. Smith

4.0 out of 5 stars Quite liked it. I now have a game plan for approaching bugs in a nonrandom manner (including intermittent bugs).
Quite liked it. I now have a game plan for approaching bugs in a nonrandom manner (including intermittent bugs):

Understand the System
- Read all related... Read more

Published 23 months ago by Jonathan Aquino

5.0 out of 5 stars I've Seen These Rules in Action
I worked with Dave Agans for over 10 years and I can tell you first hand the man knows what he's talking about. Read more

Published on February 16, 2007 by Scott A. Ross

5.0 out of 5 stars Critical work for anyone who works on any sort of system, machine, or software
This book is absolutely indispensable for anyone working in any job where things occasionally work in an unexpected manner. Read more

Published on February 13, 2007 by James Holmes

5.0 out of 5 stars For Those Who Need Debugging
This Book Demonstrates How you could debug SOMETHING systematically, from most important principle to least important principle.(All 9 As the Book name said. Read more

Published on January 9, 2007 by Yeon Jae Kim

5.0 out of 5 stars Buy This Book.
Oh boy, how much easier an engineer's life would be if every tech book was written like this one. Let's face it, nobody likes debugging. Read more

Published on August 27, 2006 by G. Dash

› See all 19 customer reviews...

.jsOffDisplayBlock { display: block; } .jsOffDisplayInline { display: inline; } .jsOffVisibility { visibility: visible; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayNoneBlock { display: block; } .jsOnDisplayNoneInline { display: inline; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; } .jsOnDisplayBlock { display: none; } .jsOnDisplayInline { display: none; } .jsOnVisibility { visibility: hidden; }

Customer Discussions

Beta (What's this?)

New! See all customer communities, and bookmark your communities to keep track of them.

This product's forum (0 discussions)

	Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
	No discussions yet

Ask questions, Share opinions, Gain insight

Start a new discussion

Topic:

First post:

Receive e-mail when new posts are made

Prompts for sign-in

[Cancel]

Guidelines

Active discussions in related forums

Discussion	Replies	Latest Post
programming C# or Java?	30	1 day ago
software Fix-It Program Problem	4	2 days ago
software Cisco Network Magic 5.1	1	4 days ago
software Lost pictures on sorting	0	5 days ago
programming looking for programming forums	18	20 days ago

The Programming community

Latest activity 5 hours ago

3,370 customers have contributed 2,411 products, 264 lists & guides and more...

› Explore the community

The Engineering community

Latest activity 8 hours ago

960 customers have contributed 1,016 products, 35 lists & guides and more...

› Explore the community

Explore more

› See all Customer Communities

› Your communities

Product Information from the Amapedia Community

Beta (What's this?)

Be the first person to add an article about this item at Amapedia.com.

› See featured Amapedia.com articles

Listmania!

Programming Tips & Techniques: A list by adfojauns
A Guide to Books on Software Debugging: A list by Markus Wloka "mgwloka"
Recommended LINUX Debugging books (Kaiwan, DG-L4): A list by Kaiwan Billimoria

Create a Listmania! list

So You'd Like to...

Become a girl hacker (and love it ): A guide by Patricia J.

Create a guide

Look for Similar Items by Category

Books > Business & Investing > Industries & Professions > High-Tech
Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware
Books > Computers & Internet > Networking > Networks, Protocols & APIs
Books > Computers & Internet > Programming
Books > Computers & Internet > Software > Business
Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Computer Technology > Robotics & Automation
Books > Professional & Technical > Engineering > Mechanical > Automation
Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Mathematics

Need a Wrench with Great Impact?

Tough jobs require the power of a wrench that won't back down. A variety of impact wrenches are available for any number of projects at prices you'll like.

›Shop for impact wrenches

Big Savings in Books

Find great titles at fantastic prices in our Bargain Books Store.

Dive into Summer Reading

Don't even think about hitting the beach without browsing the books in our Summer Reading Store. Discover bestsellers, paperback picks, beach reads, and more terrific titles all summer long.