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Effective Software Development
Effective Debugging: 66 Specific Ways to Debug Software and Systems
<!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> 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 <!--[if gte mso 9]> Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 9]> <![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]> <![endif]-->
256 pages, Paperback
First published April 18, 2016
22 people are currently reading
378 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 27, 2016
Debugging to me feels like an extremely imperfect process - while most aspects of software engineering I do on a regular basis are informed by a mix of learning/reading with a heavy dose of experience/wisdom, debugging is one part that is purely experience, without ever having read a single book on the subject. Given how much I read and how much I learn from reading, I have assumed that while I'm good at debugging I'm really in a "tip of the iceberg" situation, and with the right kind of reading material I'd really max out my skills.
I first read "Debug It!" hoping it would provide the academic and formal learning that would turn me from an okay debugger into a master debugger. But in the end, that book wound up saying nothing new and I largely felt it was a waste of time.
I had hoped Effective Debugging, with it's subtitle of "66 Specific Ways" to debug and the "Effective *" moniker that I've come to associate with excellent books traditionally, would really teach me a lot. But alas, nope, it was stuff I already do. Sometime around Chapter 2 when Item 13 suggested I enlarge my window so that the entire line of a log file would fit, I started to realize that there probably is no book that will take me from an okay debugger to a master debugger. I think everyone's just an okay debugger and that's it.
I guess this book is worth skimming, especially if you're new to software engineering. But if you've been at it for any length of time, you could likely write this entire book if only you could be hyper aware enough of your debugging process to simply write down the stuff you're doing as though it was noteworthy, rather than second nature. Overall, I just didn't get much out of it, and I was really hoping I would. Two disappointing books in and I've given up, debugging can't be taught.
I first read "Debug It!" hoping it would provide the academic and formal learning that would turn me from an okay debugger into a master debugger. But in the end, that book wound up saying nothing new and I largely felt it was a waste of time.
I had hoped Effective Debugging, with it's subtitle of "66 Specific Ways" to debug and the "Effective *" moniker that I've come to associate with excellent books traditionally, would really teach me a lot. But alas, nope, it was stuff I already do. Sometime around Chapter 2 when Item 13 suggested I enlarge my window so that the entire line of a log file would fit, I started to realize that there probably is no book that will take me from an okay debugger to a master debugger. I think everyone's just an okay debugger and that's it.
I guess this book is worth skimming, especially if you're new to software engineering. But if you've been at it for any length of time, you could likely write this entire book if only you could be hyper aware enough of your debugging process to simply write down the stuff you're doing as though it was noteworthy, rather than second nature. Overall, I just didn't get much out of it, and I was really hoping I would. Two disappointing books in and I've given up, debugging can't be taught.
December 20, 2021
A lot of these are trite, or come by naturally with experience and are hard to appreciate without it. That being said, the fun parts for me were on reverse debugging, ASLR, and false sharing, along with the pin methods for multi threaded debugging.. Worth the two hours spent reading through it.
September 15, 2017
I heard a lot of good things about that book and more than one developer recommended it to me. However, I found this book disappointing. It may be that I know far too much about debugging but none of those 66 ways offered any new insights. I read throw the first 4 or 5 advices before even realizing that those banalities aren’t the warmup but the important content of the book. I mean, is using a bug tracker / ticketing system, google the problem or run your program until the bug hits really that ground-breaking? I don’t think so. The other advices are more specific and some are even great, but overall the book stays at the simple end of debugging and doesn’t help you much when you have a complex legacy application that doesn’t behave.
The book has its good sides and when you are a junior developer (or didn’t need to debug much code) it may be even helpful. You certainly can save a lot of time if you follow the advices and don’t have to spend time figuring out those things on your own.
May 19, 2018
Some chapters are quite abstract, but another ones are too specific.
I didn't find any new ideas. All ways are well known and used everywhere. It's just a quick reference guide, nothing more. The professional community overestimated this book probably.
I didn't find any new ideas. All ways are well known and used everywhere. It's just a quick reference guide, nothing more. The professional community overestimated this book probably.
August 5, 2023
Found very useful tips, while most of them are helpful for someone getting started in programming, there were also advice that I found helpful.
Was particularly interested in understanding debuggers and this book does a good job of explaining what debuggers are and what you can do to enable debuggers to help us debug programs.
Was particularly interested in understanding debuggers and this book does a good job of explaining what debuggers are and what you can do to enable debuggers to help us debug programs.
June 4, 2017
Interesting. Got a lot of insights from it.
June 27, 2019
I'd recommend it to a second year CS/Software Engineering student.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
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