Effective Debugging: 66 Specific Ways to Debug Software and Systems (Effective Software Development Series) 1st Edition

This is a refreshing book - I don't think it will stand without update for 10 years, but as of now it is chock full of useful and relevant practical advice for improving your debugging. There is decent coverage of strategy but I prefer the "Debugging Rules" book for that - this book excels in presenting a strategy and then showing you very specifically how it might be implemented in a particular situation. There is a sample chapter available online (which exceeds the utility of the amazon preview). This is an excellent book to read and then pass around at the office - everyone will benefit.

Good book

It is quite a good book to learn useful tips to ease debugging. It isn't just about how to use breakpoints, it explains how to set up an environment that allows to reproduce bugs more easily, to add tracing to a program, to automate debugging tasks and set up symbol servers, to use static and dynamic code analysis tools to uncover bugs before they happen, etc. For startups, this book can be very useful to set up an environment that will produce software with less bugs and will ease debugging for all its programmers. As a developer, I think you need to have worked at least a few months "in real life" to fully appreciate those tips. However, if you've been working for a big software company for many years, you probably won't learn anything you didn't already stumbled upon. Nevertheless, it is a very good summary in a single package of common debugging wisdom. Also, I can say that it tackles multiple languages (C++ and Java, mainly) and multiple platforms (Windows, Linux), with a slight bias towards Linux.

The key points from the book are1. Debug is one of the greatest processes in terms of efforts and learning of a system(Sometimes you gotta take a break btw).2. Always Automate the repeatable process while debugging.3. Always work with an issue tracking system and maintain a to-do list.4. Have a comprehensive and visualized view of whatever you are debugging. Use visualization as much as you can. 5. Change a few code and conditions and let the code collapse get your hands dirty.6. Use general tools like grep.ltrac, trace, debugger more often as sometimes the debugging issue is just a mere search problem.7. Make sure your environment is always ready to use docker, Valgrind, etc. Try to duplicate as much as you can to replicate the bug-prone environment.8.Hunt and learn from a revision control system.9. Have faith in memory Dumps.10. Learn to use the debugger before programming.3.5/4. Buy if you want to know how to approach a problem a good beginner book but don't accept too much.

The book offers contemporary information about the tools and techniques used during debugging. It also provides information for debugging code under Windows with Visual Studio, Linux with gdb and for Java applications with Eclipse.

This is a relatively short book, at around 200 pages, but it’s jam-packed with good advice.The book presents 66 specific tips for debugging systems, covering everything from high level problem solving strategies and general development practices, to specific techniques for investigating, and more importantly avoiding, various types of bug.The author clearly has a huge wealth of experience, and he has managed to share that experience in a very effective way.If you’re a seasoned developer, you will probably be familiar with many of techniques presented in this book, but it’s useful to see them explicitly listed, and you’re sure to learn something new (I’ve been an integration engineer for 27+ years, working on large complex systems, and I certainly picked up a few new techniques). The book also mentions a number of useful open source projects, many of which may be new to you.If you’re a new developer, the book will bootstrap your knowledge, teaching you techniques that the most developers take years to learn.On this basis of this book, I’ve ordered some of the authors previous publications, and I look forward to reading those too.Highly recommended.