Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!mcvax!ukc!etive!lfcs!db
From: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Newsgroups: comp.software-eng
Subject: Re: software engineers
Message-ID: <1934@etive.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 5 May 89 13:29:29 GMT
References: <854@odyssey.ATT.COM> <42fba1e1.183dc@apollo.COM>
Sender: news@etive.ed.ac.uk
Reply-To: db@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Dave Berry)
Organization: Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science, Edinburgh U
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In article <42fba1e1.183dc@apollo.COM> perry@apollo.COM (Jim Perry) writes:
>
>Unfortunately I believe real debugging skills can only acquired with
>experience.  You can teach techniques for writing relatively bug-free
>code, the hard part is when you have to debug someone else's code (or 
>spec/interface, whatever).

I read several books and articles on debugging as background for my thesis.
I would recommend "Debugging C", by Robert Ward, published by Que corporation.
ALthough it focuses on C on micros without sophisticated environments,
Ward has enough useful ideas of a general nature to make this worth reading
by people learning to program in most languages and environments.

Ward does some teaching, and does teach people how to debug.  He claims
that his best pupils are those who can both design well and debug well.

		"You never smile, you know it wouldn't look right.	
 		 'Cause your dentures glow in ultra-violet light..." 
Dave Berry, Laboratory for Foundations      db%lfcs.ed.ac.uk@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk
    of Computer Science, Edinburgh Uni.	    <Atlantic Ocean>!mcvax!ukc!lfcs!db