The Science of Debugging

The only two eternals of software development are writing the code - and then debugging it. Effective debugging involves far more than walking through code with a debugger. This book recognizes that and sets out to make debugging less baffling, faster, and more effective by providing readers with the knowledge, tips, and techniques needed to rapidly identify, track down, and repair bugs. It goes further by offering practical tips on minimizing bugs and making them easier to find when they do occur. It includes chapters on testing and maintenance as they relate to debugging. Each chapter concludes with a "bug problem" and answers to these problems are provided in the last chapter. Above all, this is a book written by developers who've spent years tracking down bugs and offers practical, hands-on advice to make that task more predictable.

Matthew Telles (Lakewood, CO) is a senior developer at Microsoft. With expertise in programming, designing, documenting, and debugging applications, he is also the author of five other programming books.

Yuan Hsieh (Lone Tree, CO) has developed applications in such diverse areas as image processing, voice response systems, and robotic manipulation using languages such as C, C++, PERL, 68000 Assembly, JAVA, and more. He's currently a System Infrastructure Engineer with InfoNow Corporation.