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With chapters on Verifying Code, Predicting Errors, and Preventing Errors, this title explains tools such as FindBUGS and AGITAR, highlights techniques from integrated environments like Jazz.net, and includes demos with ESC/Java and Spec#, Eclipse and Mozilla. It is a complete and pragmatic overview of debugging.
List of contents
1. How Failures Come to Be
2. Tracking Problems
3. Making Programs Fail
4. Reproducing Problems
5. Simplifying Problems
6. Scienti?c Debugging
7. Deducing Errors
8. Observing Facts
9. Tracking Origins
10. Asserting Expectations
11. Detecting Anomalies
12. Causes and E?ects
13. Isolating Failure Causes
14. Isolating Cause-E?ect Chains
15. Fixing the Defect
Appendix: Formal De?nitions
A.1 Delta Debugging
A.2 Memory Graphs
A.3 Cause-E?ect Chains
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Praise from the experts for the first edition:
"In this book, Andreas Zeller does an excellent job introducing useful debugging techniques and tools invented in both academia and industry. The book is easy to read and actually very fun as well. It will not only help you discover a new perspective on debugging, but it will also teach you some fundamental static and dynamic program analysis techniques in plain language." --Miryung Kim, Software Developer, Motorola Korea
"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." --James Larus, Microsoft Research
"From the author of ODD, the famous data display debugger, now comes the definitive book on debugging. Zeller's book is chock-full with advice, insight, and tools to track down defects in programs, for all levels of experience and any programming language. The book is lucidly written, explaining the principles of every technique without boring the reader with minutiae. And best of all, at the end of each chapter it tells you where to download all those fancy tools. A great book for the software professional as well as the student interested in the frontiers of automated debugging." --Walter F. Tichy, Professor, University Karlsruhe, Germany
"Andreas Zeller's Why Programs Fail lays an excellent foundation far practitioners, educators, and researchers alike. Using a disciplined approach based on the scientific method, Zeller provides deep insights, detailed approaches, and illustrative examples." --David Notkin, Professor Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington
