Debug It : Find, Repair, & Prevent Bugs in Your Code (original) (raw)
« previous entry | next entry »
2010-01-24 Sunday | 02:41 pm
bellanna's former colleague Paul Butcher has written a book all about debugging software. While some of the tips may seem obvious to those with even a few years experience (you do use some form of source control, don't you?), Paul not only helps find bugs after they have occurred but also before with tips about automated testing, the use of asserts, logging, etc. Reading all the obvious tips written down in one place helped me remember that all is not lost when trying to debug the thorniest of issues. While many of the of the code examples are Java, other languages are not forgotten. There is some Python, Ruby, and C and C++.
In the section on Anti-Patterns, Paul gives advice and tips on office politics, for example dealing with Prima Donnas and issues of code ownership. The tools section covers a wide variety, not just focused on digging out bugs, bug tracking them and, just in case you don't, source control.
The book is written in a very easy going style and I can imagine a talk by him being very well received at conferences like ACCU.