Debugging Applications for Microsoft® .NET and Microsoft Windows® (Pro-Developer) eBook: John Robbins: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store

Amazon.co.uk Review

In the predecessor volume of Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Microsoft Windows, which dealt with Visual Basic 6, John Robbins broke new ground by codifying the techniques and strategies involved in debugging Microsoft Windows applications. In this tremendously revised and much longer version (in keeping with Microsoft's substantial shift to the .NET architecture), Robbins achieves great progress in making a proper professional discipline out of debugging--and in showing how to design software to keep bugs from appearing in the first place.

The greatest value of Robbins' work is in his treatment of bugs' origins in flawed software design and their later manifestation in faulty coding practice. He explains in great detail, for example, how to use assertions (in concert with error handling) to keep bad data from getting into software modules and causing trouble. This coverage is why your development team should read this book before getting too far down the development path.

If you're already done with your software system and just can't make it work right, this book offers hope as well. Want to write a method that you invoke manually only when the program is at a breakpoint in the debugger? This book shows how. Need lots of details on how to add assembly-language code to your Visual C++ .NET software? You'll find them here. There's a lot of information about how debuggers do their work in general, too. To put it concisely, this book contains a career's worth of information on how to keep bugs to a minimum and track them down when they occur. --David Wall

Topics covered: how to design Microsoft Windows software to minimise design flaws, implement designs with as few software errors as possible, and use diagnostic tools and techniques to squash bugs that make it into your systems. All the latest Visual Studio .NET tools get attention, as do techniques for getting the most out of those tools. Specific coverage goes to strategies for fixing thread deadlock problems, resolving memory troubles, and reading Dr Watson dumps. --Amazon.com

Product Description

You get huge development advantages with Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003—but you need a new bag of debugging tricks to take full advantage of them in today’s .NET and Win32® development worlds. Learn lethally effective, real-world application debugging techniques for .NET Framework 1.1 and Windows with this fully updated programming guide. Debugging expert John Robbins expands the first edition of his classic debugging book with all-new scenarios and bug-killing tools, tips, and techniques. You’ll see every .NET and Windows debugging scenario here—from XML Web services and Microsoft ASP.NET to Windows services and exceptions. Along with John’s expert guidance, you get more than 6 MB of his battle-tested source code—for the tools and tactics you need to ship better software faster!

Topics covered include:

Where bugs come from and how to think about solving them
Debugging during coding
Operating system debugging support and how Win32 debuggers work
Advanced debugger usage and .NET debugging with Visual Studio .NET
Advanced native code techniques with Visual Studio .NET and WinDBG
Extending the Visual Studio .NET integrated development environment
Managed exception monitoring
Flow tracing and performance
Finding source and line information with just a crash address
Crash handlers
Debugging Windows services and DLLs that load into services
Multithreaded deadlocks
Automated testing
The Debug C run-time library
A high-performance tracing tool for server applications
Smoothing the working set
Appendixes: Reading Dr. Watson log files, plus resources for .NET and Windows developers

CD-ROM features:

6+ MB of professional-level source code samples written in Microsoft Visual C++®, Visual C#®, and Visual Basic® .NET
Debugging Tools for Windows
Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1 SDK
Windows Application Compatibility Toolkit (ACT)

A Note Regarding the CD or DVD

The print version of this book ships with a CD or DVD. For those customers purchasing one of the digital formats in which this book is available, we are pleased to offer the CD/DVD content as a free download via O'Reilly Media's Digital Distribution services. To download this content, please visit O'Reilly's web site, search for the title of this book to find its catalog page, and click on the link below the cover image (Examples, Companion Content, or Practice Files). Note that while we provide as much of the media content as we are able via free download, we are sometimes limited by licensing restrictions. Please direct any questions or concerns to booktech@oreilly.com.

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Essential engineering tome for Microsoft developers 27 April 2003

By T. Kirby Green

Format:Paperback

This is a top class book, and easily one of the best developer books I've read to come out of Microsoft Press in the last year. The first edition rocked and this update (more of a complete rewrite really) is well worth getting if you had the first edition. The book balances very well the managed (.NET) and un-managed debugging domains - however much of the real value is the help it gives you debugging systems that mix the two together. Almost all of all the "interesting" debugging I've done in the last year was in systems that mixed up .NET and "legacy code". You should read this book not only if you want to learn more about debugging, but if you want to learn more about the underlying platform, if you used to buy those "Inside Windows NT" books then get a copy of this. There is a lot of coverage of the cool new debugging features in Visual Studio .NET 2003 (I know a lot of developers who still limit themselves to the Visual Studio 6 subset of functionality which is insane), at the same time there is lots of good stuff for those who prefer to live at a command prompt and want to get "under the IDE".

Finally, I would say that this is a great book for putting the "fire back in the belly" when it comes to delivering software that you'd be proud to own up to. I've been waving pages from it under the noses of other senior developers and managers at our shop.

It's not a light read, but it's time well spent and whilst I think you'll get most value reading it cover to cover it is structured such that you can dive in and rapidly use the techniques and knowledge "in anger".

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Amazon.com: 12 reviews

22 of 24 people found the following review helpful

Never Leave Home Without It 13 April 2003

By Elijah D - Published on Amazon.com

Being John Robbin's greatest fan, I have been monitoring the release of this book right after it appeared on amazon. Once It hit the market for real, I got a copy via express delivery and I have to say it's worth the wait. I haven't actually read the whole think yet but its very impressive so far.

John walks the reader through debugging without tears. This edition of the book does contain a lot more information and is very current (a little too current cos all the binaries were built with VS .NET 2003 which is not in the market at this time.
However, this didn't hinder me since I have a copy of the RC. The first part of the book covers coding practices that will reduce the need to debug in the first place. The other parts of the book go into the dirty details of going after bugs with full confidence. From native win32 to managed code to multithreading; its all here.

If you're tired of scratching your head even when you have a debugger in front of you, stop reading my review and get yourself a copy of this book right away.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

A very useful discussion of Windows debugging practices 7 Jan 2005

By Brent A. Thale - Published on Amazon.com

This book brings a vast amount of Windows-specific debugging information together in one place and has been very helpful to me. Some of this info could be found elsewhere, but only by sorting through dozens of documentation pages and magazine articles, some many years old, and additionally the author adds value by giving very explicit instructions (even providing source code) on how to do things that are often only hinted at in the Microsoft documentation.

Most useful to me were the symbol-server tips, the SuperAssert macro and seeing how it does it what it does, crash handling in general, and the author's insight into why certain things are so slow (like OutputDebugString).

This book does have a not-so-subtle anti-C++ bias, there are little digs at C++ coding techniques throughout the book, which seem a little antiquated and inappropriate in 2005.

In the chapter on the debug C-runtime, I'm really surprised the author does not suggest writing a leak-detection system that captures the callstack at the time of allocation, I've found the C-runtime's file-and-line-oriented leak report fairly useless since the allocation is often deep inside some container class, you really need to know what code caused the allocation, not what code actually did the allocation. And the recommended feature that walks the entire heap every N allocations is unusable (it's too slow) in a large C++ program which might have many thousands of allocations. Also, redefining C++ keywords as suggested seems so evil, there are better ways of doing this.

I believe Windows XP Service Pack 2 changed some Windows internals that affect crash handling/debugging/stack walking, I wouldn't mind seeing an updated volume that covers these changes in detail.

Overall though, an excellent book, the most useful debugging book I've found so far.

40 of 56 people found the following review helpful

Below the belt... 24 Sep 2003

By Paul Selormey - Published on Amazon.com

I bought this book to get a complete knowledge of the .NET framework debugging and got nothing. May be the .NET in the title applies to the fact that the author is using the VS.NET. If you have got the author's previous book on debugging then there is no need to waste money on this one.

It discusses mainly C/C++ debugging in a typical MFC style (ASSERT/VERIFY etc).

Here is the content at a glance:

1. Bugs: Where they come From and How you Solve Them
2. Getting Started Debugging
3. Debugging During Coding

4. Operating System Debugging Support and How Win32 Debuggers Work
5. Advanced Debugger Usage with Visual Studio .NET
6. Advanced .NET Debugging with Visual Studio .NET
7. Advanced Native Code Techniques with Visual Studio .NET
8. Advanced Native Code Techniques with WinDGB

9. Extending the Visual Studio .NET IDE
10. Managed Exception Monitoring
11. Flow Tracing

12. Finding Source and Line Information with Just a Crash Address
13. Crash Handlers
14. Debugging Windows Services and DLLs That Load into Services
15. Multithreaded Deadlocks
16. Automated Testing
17. The Debug C Run-Time Library and Memory Management
18. FastTrace: A High-Performance Tracing Tool for Server Applications
19. Smoothing the Working Set

Appendixes.

As you can tell, there is hardly a .NET stuff to pay for, so for those of us owing the author's previous debugging book, this is just a second edition with .NET appended to confuse buyers!

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