Debugging: The Nine Indispensable Rules for Finding Even the Most Elusive Software and Hardware Problems
- 2h 47m
- David J. Agans
- AMACOM
- 2002
Fending off the best attempts of skilled engineers, hardware defects and software errors can stymie the efforts of the “tech detectives” attempting to unscramble them. In Debugging, Dave Agans identifies nine simple, practical rules, applicable to any software application or hardware system, which can help detect any bug, no matter how tricky or obscure.
Agans uses real-life bug-detection war stories to show you how to apply foolproof, universal strategies such as Quit Thinking and Look, Change One Thing at a Time, and Keep an Audit Trail to problems as varied as overheated microchips, eggnog-induced short circuits, and distorted touch screens—plus many others. Debugging provides real techniques for isolating critical factors, running test sequences, and discovering how failures arise.
Whether the system or program you’re working on has been designed wrong, built wrong, used wrong—or is just plain broken—the book helps you think correctly about bugs, so the problems virtually reveal themselves.
About the Author
David J. Agans is a recognized expert on tough debugging problems. He currently runs PointSource, a computer systems consultancy. He has worked with industrial control and monitoring systems, integrated circuit design, handheld PCs, videoconferencing, and countless other systems.
In this Book
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Introduction
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The Rules-Suitable for Framing
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Understand the System
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Make it Fail
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Quit Thinking and Look
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Divide and Conquer
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Change One Thing at a Time
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Keep an Audit Trail
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Check the Plug
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Get a Fresh View
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If You Didn't Fix it, It Ain't Fixed
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All the Rules in One Story
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Easy Exercises for the Reader
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The View From the Help Desk
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The Bottom Line
