Rubber duck debugging

Abstract: Applicative programming languages have several properties that appear to make debugging difficult. First, the absence of assignment statements complicates the notion of changing a program while debugging. Second, the absence of imperative input and output makes it harder to obtain information about what the program is doing. Third, the presence of lazy evaluation prevents the user from knowing much about the order in which events occur. Some solutions to these problems involve nonapplicative extensions to the language. Fortunately, the same features of applicative languages that cause problems for traditional debugging also support an idiomatic applicative style of programming, and effective debugging techniques can be implemented using that style. This paper shows how to implement tracing and interactive debugging tools in a purely applicative style. This approach is more flexible, extensive and portable than debugging tools that require modification to the language implementation.

Abstract: Debugging is crucial to successful software development, but even many experienced programmers find it challenging. Sophisticated debugging tools are available, yet it may be difficult to determine which features are useful in which situations. The Art of Debugging is your guide to making the debugging process more efficient and effective. The Art of Debugging illustrates the use three of the most popular debugging tools on Linux/Unix platforms: GDB, DDD, and Eclipse. The text-command based GDB (the GNU Project Debugger) is included with most distributions. DDD is a popular GUI front end for GDB, while Eclipse provides a complete integrated development environment. In addition to offering specific advice for debugging with each tool, authors Norm Matloff and Pete Salzman cover general strategies for improving the process of finding and fixing coding errors, including how to: Inspect variables and data structures Understand segmentation faults and core dumps Know why your program crashes or throws exceptions Use features like catchpoints, convenience variables, and artificial arrays Avoid common debugging pitfalls Real world examples of coding errors help to clarify the authors' guiding principles, and coverage of complex topics like thread, client-server, GUI, and parallel programming debugging will make you even more proficient. You'll also learn how to prevent errors in the first place with text editors, compilers, error reporting, and static code checkers. Whether you dread the thought of debugging your programs or simply want to improve your current debugging efforts, you'll find a valuable ally in The Art of Debugging.

Abstract: Software developers working on multi-language systems can utilize a multi-language debugging environment. The debugging environment can be uniform across languages, and can seamlessly perform debugging between one or more languages in a multi-language environment. Such a system can have a number of attributes intended to help developers facing debugging problems in multi-language environments.

Abstract: Software has bugs. Period. That's true, unfortunately. Even the good old "hello, world" program, known to virtually every C and C++ programmer in the world, can be considered to be buggy. Developing software means having to deal with defects; old ones, new ones, ones you created yourself and those that others brought to life. Software developers debug programs for a living. Hence, good debugging skills are a must-have. That said, I always found it regretable that debugging is hardly taught in engineering schools. Well, it is a tricky subject, and there are no good textbooks. The latter can be helped, I thought. That's how the idea for this book was born. "The Developer's Guide to Debugging" is a book for both professional software developers seeking to broaden their skills and students that want to learn the tricks of the trade from the ground up. With small inlined examples and exercises at the end of each chapter it is well suited to accompany a CS course or lecture. At the same time it can be used as a reference used to address problems as the need arises. This book goes beyond the level of simple source code debugging scenarios. In addition, it covers the most frequent real-world problems from the areas of program linking, memory access, parallel processing and performance analysis. The picture is completed by chapters covering static checkers and techniques to write code that leans well towards debugging. While the focus lies on C and C++, the workhorses of the software industry, one can apply most principles described in "The Developer's Guide to Debugging" to programs written in other languages. The techniques are not restricted to a particular compiler, debugger or operating system. The examples are structured such that they can be reproduced with free open-source software.