Book Reviews, September 2008

By Peter Toft, Denmark, September 2008

I have been working with software for many years, and with Linux systems for 15 years professionally. When maintaining and developing software you know that you have to use "debugging tools", but most users will simply resort to "printf" when debugging C/C++ code. This book tries to make a difference here. The book both described how the C/C++ tool chains work, and then systematically describes which tools to use in which context - and describes the tool usage in many examples. The book has a bias towards Linux (UNIX) systems, but is also relevant for Windows developers.

When debugging you can most often spend LOTS of time. I was skilled already before reading the book - but there were quite a few places in the book I had to mark "this is very clever, and I have to try this asap". The end result after reading the book is that you can do way more effective debugging with open source SW tools like gdb and valgrind.

When I above write "tries", then I must also add the word "succeeds". This is a good book. If you want to be a more productive C/C++ developer buy the book. It will help you a lot.

Peter Toft Danish Open Source evangelist, writer, blogger, conference organizer, and Senior specialist in algorithm design too :)

By Sandro Rigo, Campinas, Brazil, September 2008

I have been teaching computer programming to CS and CE undergraduate students in their early stages of their courses. One of the toughest concepts to teach is debugging. It is common to see them relying on printf-based techniques to debug their programs even in the last stages of the course, just because they did not invested enough time on learning an appropriate approach to SW debugging.

That is exactly where this book can be very valuable, presenting a systematic approach for debugging and a lot of interesting tricks/techniques that any code developer can benefit from.

This book is a very interesting reading for SW developers, I am sure that even the most experienced ones can find at least a couple of useful tricks to add to their arsenal against the most annoying bugs.

By Prof Dr W. Rosenstiel, Universität Tübingen, Germany, September 2008

The Developer's Guide to Debugging

The book The Developer's Guide to Debugging is a detailed introduction to the world of "debugging" in C/C++-programs. The authors explain by means of many examples a huge amount of debugging-tools (GDB, Valgrind etc.). The authors also take into account special cases, like the debugging of parallel programs. So, tools as well as debugging-techniques are described. There is also a particular chapter dealing with performance-optimization, to be exact, with the debugging that affect the efficiency of the program. The book not only offers a helpful survey to beginners, but also to experienced "bug-hunters". At the end of each chapter there appears a list giving further literature. This indeed is quite helpful when it comes to certain debugging-topics. There is one thing that could be criticized and that is the short index, but that is compensated by the precise structure.

To summarize, this is a very helpful book for software developers which I strongly recommend to read and use.

By Andrea Kroll, September 2008

Printf is a great tool, but not the answer to all debugging problems. Reading this book I realized that there are a lot more tools out there available to everyone. They are equally easy to use and provide a lot more help to find even the nastiest bugs in any kind of SW application. It is clear that the writers have a lot of experience with supporting users and customers at different level of SW expertize, while being SW developers themselves. They provide a step by step description of various interesting tricks. They do not assume that you are the SW guru with years and years of SW development experience. Still there are surprising new approaches for the experts not only in the advanced debugging chapter. The examples are easy to reproduce and work.

The book is even entertaining. You can read it cover to cover, while meeting the bug-family with all their flaws and their tricks to hide, together with people, I am sure you will recognize.

This is a must read for SW engineers, if you want to be more productive and maybe finally get some sleep, because you got your boss (or your customer) off your back.