Books on debugging

None of the ideas here is my own. They are all plundered from books and parts of the web.

A few of the books are really good, so I've recommended these. The core material of debugging is pretty much the same wherever you look. Unlike other areas of computing, the number of books published on this area is pretty small so I try to keep on top of this.

If you feel anything is missing, ping me at @danfrost.

Recommended books

The Science of Debugging is not small, and a lot of the book is annecdotes which you can skim over or glean useful experience by-proxy, but this contains many of the core rules for debugging.

Debugging - 9 Indispensable Rules of Debugging distills what I've written about here into 9 rules. The tone is very different from several others, and isn't just about debugging software but everything. All these rules are abstract and can be applied to any part of life, so it's good to see this recognised. You'll have to apply these to your own software experiences yourself though.

More books on debugging 

Debugging by Thinking: A Multidisciplinary Approach (HP Technologies)
John Robbins: Debugging Applications, Microsoft Press, ISBN 0-7356-0886-5

Ann R. Ford, Toby J. Teorey: Practical Debugging in C++, Pren- tice Hall, ISBN 0-13-065394-2

Software Exorcism: A Handbook for Debugging and Optimizing Legacy Code by Bill Blunden

Software Reliability: Principles and Practice (Business Data Processing: A Wiley Series) by Glenford J Myers

The Art of Software Testing by Glenford J Myers

Why Programs Fail: A Guide to Systematic Debugging by Andreas Zeller. See also www.whyprogramsfail.com