Why programs fail
Why Programs Fail is about bugs in computer programs, how to find them, how to reproduce them, and how to fix them in such a way that they do not occur anymore. This is the first comprehensive book on systematic debugging and covers a wide range of tools and techniques ranging from hands-on observation to fully automated diagnoses, and includes instructions for building automated debuggers. This discussion is built upon a solid theory of how failures occur, rather than relying on seat-of-the-pants techniques, which are of little help with large software systems or to those learning to program. The author, Andreas Zeller, is well known in the programming community for creating the GNU Data Display Debugger (DDD), a tool that visualizes the data structures of a program while it is running. Winner of a 2006 Jolt Productivity Award for Technical Books Shows how to reproduce software failures faithfully, how to isolate what is important about the failure, and to discover what caused it Describes how to fix the program in the best possible way, and shows how to create your own automated debugging tools Includes exercises and extensive references for further study
Stats for nerds
7recommend
9mentions
8people
2012–2026years
89% recommend11% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Also see Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging by Andreas Zeller - https://shop.elsevier.com/books/why-programs-fail/zeller/978...
- Gifted to all new hires, lent to all interns (gifted if finished ;-) : Why Programs Fail, by Andreas Zeller. http://www.whyprogramsfail.com
- In addition to the mentioned book "Debugging" by David Agans there is also "Why programs fail" by Andreas Zeller:
http://www.whyprogramsfail.com/
The author of the latter book is a Professor from Saarbrücken and former maintainer of GNU DDD.
- Saarland University seems to be putting out great research in the last few years. The author is advised by S. Hack (http://compilers.cs.uni-saarland.de/people/hack/publications...). Saarland also has Andreas Zeller ( https://www.st.cs.uni-saarland.de/zeller/) who wrote 'Why Programs Fail' which I gift to junior developers. There's also the great Fuzzing Book (https://www.fuzzingbook.org) in progress. Probably a great place to do CS research right now.
- I was just reading the editorial reviews for the "Why Programs Fail" [0] that you recommended and couldn't agree more with this statement:
"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
This was something my school's CS program severely lacked.
[0] https://www.amazon.com/Why-Programs-Fail-Systematic-Debuggin...
- Andreas Zeller, original author of GNU DDD, has a good book called "Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging", 2nd edition.
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Programs-Fail-Systematic-Debugging...
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