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Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging
 
 
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Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging (Paperback)

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Key Phrases: Deducing Errors, Asserting Expectations, Mac System (more...)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)

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  Kindle Edition, October 25, 2005 $43.16 -- --
  Paperback, June 25, 2009 $53.95 $48.74 $49.95
  Paperback, October 25, 2005 -- $48.90 $18.99

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Editorial Reviews

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


Book Description

The first complete guide to systematic debugging
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 480 pages
  • Publisher: Morgan Kaufmann (October 25, 2005)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1558608664
  • ISBN-13: 978-1558608665
  • Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 7.4 x 1.1 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #861,482 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

    Popular in these categories: (What's this?)

    #50 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Programming > Languages & Tools > Debugging
    #92 in  Books > Computers & Internet > Hardware > Parallel Processing Computers

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More About the Author

Andreas Zeller
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Surprise Me!
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Deducing Errors, Asserting Expectations, Mac System, Making Programs Fail, Scientific Debugging, Delta Debugging Log, Entering Article, Leaving Article, Ockham's Razor, Automated Presentation, Calling Article, The Devil's Guide
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7 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (7 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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10 of 10 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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2 of 2 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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1 of 1 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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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Building Manageable Software
I think this should be the title of this book, because "Andreas Zeller" not only talking about dry methods of managing and debugging software code but he teaches how to draw a... Read more
Published 10 months ago by coder

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
This book is great for both software testing engineers and software developers. I definitely recommend it for anyone interested in the field of developing or testing softwares -... Read more
Published on May 6, 2007 by Ovidiu Ursachi

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of interesting ideas
This book contains perhaps a bit too much general background. After all, there are already many shelfloads of books out there that cover things like design and project management... Read more
Published on June 2, 2006 by Paul Floyd

5.0 out of 5 stars Extremely thoughtful
As a practionner I am delighted to see a systematic method applied to software. Too often is writing software compared to art or magic, while more often that not it is a matter of... Read more
Published on November 5, 2005 by ALQ

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