Why Programs Fail

"James Madison wrote: 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary.' If he lived today, Madison might have written: 'If software developers were angels, debugging would be unnecessary.' Most of us, however, make mistakes, and many of us even make errors while designing and writing software. Our mistakes need to be found and fixed, an activity called debugging that originated with the first computer programs. 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." - from the foreword by James Larus, Microsoft Research "Andreas Zeller seeks to equip you with a comprehensive arsenal of techniques and the appropriate mind-sets for employing them." Rick Wayne, Software Development, January 2006

"James Madison wrote: 'If men were angels, no government would be necessary.' If he lived today, Madison might have written: 'If software developers were angels, debugging would be unnecessary.' Most of us, however, make mistakes, and many of us even make errors while designing and writing software. Our mistakes need to be found and fixed, an activity called debugging that originated with the first computer programs. 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." —from the foreword by James Larus, Microsoft Research
"Andreas Zeller seeks to equip you with a comprehensive arsenal of techniques and the appropriate mind-sets for employing them." Rick Wayne, Software Development, January 2006