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- From: S_JUFFA@iravcl.ira.uka.de (|S| Norbert Juffa)
- Newsgroups: comp.arch
- Subject: Re: Debugging feats (was Re: Why would you like a debugger (
- Date: 13 Aug 1992 18:16:23 GMT
- Organization: University of Karlsruhe (FRG) - Informatik Rechnerabt.
- Lines: 31
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <16e8tnINNm3j@iraul1.ira.uka.de>
- References: <1241@esl.ESL.COM> <1992Aug12.165324.27749@bcars64a.bnr.ca>
- NNTP-Posting-Host: irav1.ira.uka.de
- X-News-Reader: VMS NEWS 1.23
- In-Reply-To: schow@bqneh3.bnr.ca's message of 12 Aug 92 16:53:24 GMT
-
- In <1992Aug12.165324.27749@bcars64a.bnr.ca> schow@bqneh3.bnr.ca writes:
-
-
- > Not to deny Knuth's ability, but it is also possible that he has seen so
- > many people make the same mistake over and over that he can pick out the
- > bug by doing local pattern matching. I know that when I was "student
- > advisor" in the computer room, I used to amaze students by picking out
- > their bugs before they can even tell me the symtoms. (I don't think I was
- > unique at all). Not knowing anything about WEB or the program in question,
- > this is mere speculation.
- >
- Having also been a "student advisor" (in Germany we call them "tutor") in the
- computer room some time back, I would support Stanley's opinion. I, too, would
- occasionally amaze students by picking out there bugs as soon as I saw their
- code. I am pretty much sure that after doing a lot of debugging work, you find
- a lot of bugs by a kind of pattern matching. Plus you know where to look for
- the most common errors: uninitialized pointer? function side effects due to use
- of global veriables? procedure entry and exit code? stack corruption
- (unbalanced PUSH and POP)? (the last two apply especially to assembly language
- programming. Taking into consideration that Prof. Knuth has 30 years of
- programming experience while I have only 10 years, I find it very well possible
- that he finds bugs just by flipping thru a printout.
- > --
- > Stanley Chow InterNet: schow@BNR.CA
- > Bell Northern Research UUCP: ..!uunet!bnrgate!bqneh3!schow
- > (613) 763-2831
- > Me? Represent other people? Don't make them laugh so hard.
-
- Norbert
- -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- Norbert Juffa email:S_JUFFA@IRAVCL.IRA.UKA.DE Live and let live!
-