Between my earlier career in electronics and my current career in software, I have found a number of questions that have been helpful in troubleshooting problems reported by others. None of these questions are original to me. My wife described troubleshooting a hardware problem over the phone and mentions some of her troubleshooting questions. I… Read More »
Back in February, I ran across the post robkinyon on Perl: How useful is a debugger, really? and was again reminded of the great debugging debate. I thought about commenting on it at the time, but I got distracted. Well, Matt Trout reminded me of it again today with his post Simple Debugging. So, I… Read More »
Last week, I wrote about a technique for debugging without using a debugger in Debugging Without a Debugger. I talked a bit about the advantages of instrumenting code and how it can be used to supplement the use of a debugger. Those of you who have always used a debugger might consider this vaguely interesting,… Read More »
I’ve noticed something about the programmers I have dealt with in the last few years. Many of them seem to equate debugging skill with ability to use a debugger. In fact, in some instances, the concept of being able to troubleshoot a problem outside a debugger is so foreign it would never occur to them.… Read More »
Every now and then, I manage to pull myself away from reading and reviewing computer books (my hobby for the last year) or programming (my hobby for … never mind), and spend a little time on various weblogs. It’s important to see what the names in the field are thinking and talking about. During one… Read More »
In LinuxDevCenter.com: Tales of Optimization and Troubleshooting [Jun. 03, 2004], Howard Feldman presents three examples of troubleshooting and fixing bottlenecks. One thing I really like about this article is the methodical way the author goes about solving these problems. Having tried to teach troubleshooting to entry-level programmers, I know that it is very hard to… Read More »
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.
Earlier in this weblog, I listed some of my basic troubleshooting rules. I thought it was probably time to come back and spend a little more time on this topic. I plan to expand on the points I made earlier and add a few more thoughts along the way.
Here are a few basic rules of troubleshooting and debugging. Divide and conquer (always) 50/50 tests are best Verify can’t happen cases with a test Steady progress is better than random guessing If you guess and fail, go back to #1. Don’t try to keep guessing. I’ve been trying to formulate a good set of… Read More »