Bug Patterns in Java presents a methodology for diagnosing and debugging computer programs. The act of debugging will be presented as an ideal application of the scientific method. Skill in this area is entirely independent of other programming skills, such as designing for extensibility and reuse. Nevertheless, it is seldom taught explicitly. Eric Allen lays out a theory of debugging, and how it relates to the rest of the development cycle. In particular, he stresses the critical role of unit testing in effective debugging. At the same time, he argues that testing and debugging, while often conflated, are properly considered to be distinct tasks.
Upon laying this groundwork, Allen then discusses various "bug patterns" (recurring relationships between signaled errors and underlying bugs in a program) that occur frequently in computer programs. For each pattern, the book discusses how to identify them, how to treat them, and how to prevent them.
Chapter 1: Agile Methods in a Chaotic Environment
Chapter 2: Bugs, Specifications, and Implementations
Chapter 3: Debugging and the Development Process
Chapter 4: Debugging and the Testing Process
Chapter 5: The Scientific Method of Debugging
Chapter 6: About the Bug Patterns
Chapter 7: The Rogue Tile
Chapter 8: Null Pointers Everywhere!
Chapter 9: The Dangling Composite
Chapter 10: The Null Flag
Chapter 11: The Double Descent
Chapter 12: The Liar View
Chapter 13: Saboteur Data
Chapter 14: The Broken Dispatch
Chapter 15: The Impostor Type
Chapter 16: The Split Cleaner
Chapter 17: The Fictitious Implementation
Chapter 18: The Orphaned Thread
Chapter 19: The Run-On Initialization
Chapter 20: Platform-Dependent Patterns
Chapter 21: A Diagnostic Checklist
Chapter 22: Design Patterns for Debugging
Chapter 23: References
Appendix String-Parsing List Constructor
Glossary of Terms |
