A total guide to debuggers: what they do, how they work, and how to use them to produce better programs "Debuggers are the magnifying glass, the microscope, the logic analyzer, the profiler, and the browser with which a program can be examined."-Jonathan B. Rosenberg Debuggers are an indispensable tool in the development process. In fact, during the course of the average software project, more hours are spent debugging software than in compiling code. Yet, not many programmers really know how to constructively interpret the results they get back from debuggers. And even fewer know what makes these complex suites of algorithms and data structures tick. Now in this extremely accessible guide, Jonathan B. Rosenberg demystifies debuggers for programmers and shows them how to make better use of debuggers in their next projects. Taking a hands-on, problem-solving approach to a complex subject, Rosenberg explains how debuggers work and why programmers use them. Most importantly, he provides practical discussions of debugger algorithms and procedures for their use, accompanied by many practical examples. The author also discusses a wide variety of systems applications, from Microsoft's Win32 debug API to a large parallel architecture. Visit our Web site at: http://www.wiley.com/compbooks/

An Essential Reference for Intermediate and Advanced R Programmers Advanced R presents useful tools and techniques for attacking many types of R programming problems, helping you avoid mistakes and dead ends. With more than ten years of experience programming in R, the author illustrates the elegance, beauty, and flexibility at the heart of R. The book develops the necessary skills to produce quality code that can be used in a variety of circumstances. You will learn: The fundamentals of R, including standard data types and functions Functional programming as a useful framework for solving wide classes of problems The positives and negatives of metaprogramming How to write fast, memory-efficient code This book not only helps current R users become R programmers but also shows existing programmers what’s special about R. Intermediate R programmers can dive deeper into R and learn new strategies for solving diverse problems while programmers from other languages can learn the details of R and understand why R works the way it does.

When the pressure is on to resolve an elusive software or hardware glitch, what’s needed is a cool head courtesy of a set of rules guaranteed to work on any system, in any circumstance. Written in a frank but engaging style, this book provides simple, foolproof principles guaranteed to help find any bug quickly. Recognized tech expert and author David Agans changes the way you think about debugging, making those pesky problems suddenly much easier to find and fix. Agans identifies nine simple, practical rules that are applicable to any software application or hardware system, which can help detect any bug, no matter how tricky or obscure. Illustrating the rules with real-life bug-detection war stories, Debugging shows you how to: Understand the system: how perceiving the ""roadmap"" can hasten your journey Quit thinking and look: when hands-on investigation can’t be avoided Isolate critical factors: why changing one element at a time can be an essential tool Keep an audit trail: how keeping a record of the debugging process can win the day Whether the system or program you’re working on has been designed wrong, built wrong, or used wrong, Debugging helps you think correctly about bugs, so the problems virtually reveal themselves.

Debugging is crucial to successful software development, but even many experienced programmers find it challenging. Sophisticated debugging tools are available, yet it may be difficult to determine which features are useful in which situations. The Art of Debugging is your guide to making the debugging process more efficient and effective. The Art of Debugging illustrates the use three of the most popular debugging tools on Linux/Unix platforms: GDB, DDD, and Eclipse. The text-command based GDB (the GNU Project Debugger) is included with most distributions. DDD is a popular GUI front end for GDB, while Eclipse provides a complete integrated development environment. In addition to offering specific advice for debugging with each tool, authors Norm Matloff and Pete Salzman cover general strategies for improving the process of finding and fixing coding errors, including how to: –Inspect variables and data structures –Understand segmentation faults and core dumps –Know why your program crashes or throws exceptions –Use features like catchpoints, convenience variables, and artificial arrays –Avoid common debugging pitfalls Real world examples of coding errors help to clarify the authors’ guiding principles, and coverage of complex topics like thread, client-server, GUI, and parallel programming debugging will make you even more proficient. You'll also learn how to prevent errors in the first place with text editors, compilers, error reporting, and static code checkers. Whether you dread the thought of debugging your programs or simply want to improve your current debugging efforts, you'll find a valuable ally in The Art of Debugging.

Use Windows debuggers throughout the development cycle—and build better software Rethink your use of Windows debugging and tracing tools—and learn how to make them a key part of test-driven software development. Led by a member of the Windows Fundamentals Team at Microsoft, you’ll apply expert debugging and tracing techniques—and sharpen your C++ and C# code analysis skills—through practical examples and common scenarios. Learn why experienced developers use debuggers in every step of the development process, and not just when bugs appear. Discover how to: Go behind the scenes to examine how powerful Windows debuggers work Catch bugs early in the development cycle with static and runtime analysis tools Gain practical strategies to tackle the most common code defects Apply expert tricks to handle user-mode and kernel-mode debugging tasks Implement postmortem techniques such as JIT and dump debugging Debug the concurrency and security aspects of your software Use debuggers to analyze interactions between your code and the operating system Analyze software behavior with Xperf and the Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) framework

Python is fast becoming the programming language of choice for hackers, reverse engineers, and software testers because it's easy to write quickly, and it has the low-level support and libraries that make hackers happy. But until now, there has been no real manual on how to use Python for a variety of hacking tasks. You had to dig through forum posts and man pages, endlessly tweaking your own code to get everything working. Not anymore. Gray Hat Python explains the concepts behind hacking tools and techniques like debuggers, trojans, fuzzers, and emulators. But author Justin Seitz goes beyond theory, showing you how to harness existing Python-based security tools—and how to build your own when the pre-built ones won't cut it. You'll learn how to: –Automate tedious reversing and security tasks –Design and program your own debugger –Learn how to fuzz Windows drivers and create powerful fuzzers from scratch –Have fun with code and library injection, soft and hard hooking techniques, and other software trickery –Sniff secure traffic out of an encrypted web browser session –Use PyDBG, Immunity Debugger, Sulley, IDAPython, PyEMU, and more The world's best hackers are using Python to do their handiwork. Shouldn't you?

The ability to solve difficult problems is what makes a good engineer great. This book teaches techniques and tools for developers to tackle even the most persistent bugs. You'll find that tough issues can be made simple with the right knowledge, tools, and practices. Practical Debugging for .NET Developers will transform you into the guy or gal who everyone turns to for help. Issues covered include .NET Core, C#, Memory Leaks, Performance Problems, ASP.NET, Performance Counters, ETW Events, Production Debugging, Memory Pressure, Visual Studio, Hangs, Profiling, Deadlocks, Crashes, Memory Dumps, and Azure. * Discover the best tools in the industry to diagnose and fix problems * Learn advanced debugging techniques with Visual Studio * Fix memory leaks and memory pressure issues * Detect, profile, and fix performance problems * Find the root cause of crashes and hangs * Debug production code and third-party code * Analyze ASP.NET applications for slow performance, failed requests, and hangs * Use dump files, Performance Counters, and ETW events to investigate what happens under the hood * Troubleshoot cloud environments, including Azure VMs and App Services * Code samples in C# * Covering .NET Core, .NET Framework, Windows, and Linux

Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting. Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 15 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed: Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo! L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1 Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hacker

In the course of their 20+-year engineering careers, authors Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman have picked up a treasure trove of wisdom and anecdotes about how successful teams work together. Their conclusion? Even among people who have spent decades learning the technical side of their jobs, most haven’t really focused on the human component. Learning to collaborate is just as important to success. If you invest in the "soft skills" of your job, you can have a much greater impact for the same amount of effort. The authors share their insights on how to lead a team effectively, navigate an organization, and build a healthy relationship with the users of your software. This is valuable information from two respected software engineers whose popular series of talks—including "Working with Poisonous People"—has attracted hundreds of thousands of followers.

Drill down into Windows architecture and internals, discover how core Windows components work behind the scenes, and master information you can continually apply to improve architecture, development, system administration, and support. Led by three renowned Windows internals experts, this classic guide is now fully updated for Windows 10 and 8.x. As always, it combines unparalleled insider perspectives on how Windows behaves “under the hood” with hands-on experiments that let you experience these hidden behaviors firsthand. Part 2 examines these and other key Windows 10 OS components and capabilities: Startup and shutdown The Windows Registry Windows management mechanisms WMI System mechanisms ALPC ETW Cache Manager Windows file systems The hypervisor and virtualization UWP Activation Revised throughout, this edition also contains three entirely new chapters: Virtualization technologies Management diagnostics and tracing Caching and file system support