Programmer Musings

More Debugging Information

In my weblog entry from a couple of days ago More Thoughts About Debugging, I forgot to add the information that prompted me to write in the first place.

I was looking around a few weeks ago and found a series of links providing various pieces of debugging and troubleshooting information.

The site The NEW Troubleshooters.Com, provides troubleshooting suggestions on a different subjects including computers and cars. I found the layout a little unusual, but the information was good.

The site Softpanorama Debugging Links provides a large number of individual pages aimed at different aspects of debugging. It includes information on some programs, some kinds of bugs, and a few other subjects, as well.

For a completely different approach to looking at debugging, the Algorithmic and Automatic Debugging Home Page focuses on automatic ways of finding bugs, formal methods, and research.

I was reading DDJ and ran into a reference for the Debugging rules! site. This site claims to be able to help you "Find out what's wrong with anything, fast." It does focus on basic debugging steps that could be applied to most problems. It also has a section devoted to debugging war stories that is
worth a read.

This ACM Queue article suggests that source code analysis tools might be able to reduce bugs in real code. Does not provide much proof, but does reference other articles that might. ACM Queue - Uprooting Software Defects at the Source - So many bugs, so few bug hunters. Fight back!

This ACM Queue survey article asks people what tools and techniques they use to debug. (ACM Queue - Another Day Another Bug - Which bugs make you want to call it quits?)

Finally, ACM Queue - Debugging in an Asynchronous World - How do you even begin to understand the behavior of asynchronous code? covers the topic of debugging asynchronous programs. This is a completely different kind of problem.