Debugging, by David J. Agans, describes “the 9 indispensable rules for finding even the most elusive software and hardware problems,” and they are:

• Understand the System
• Make It Fail
• Quit Thinking and Look
• Divide and Conquer
• Change One Thing at a Time
• Keep an Audit Trail
• Check the Plug
• Get a Fresh View
• If You Didn’t Fix It, It Ain’t Fixed

This book was fun to read. Entertaining “war stories” are used to help illuminate each of the nine rules, and humor – mostly successful – is used throughout to help keep your interest. Experienced debuggers really do follow these rules, but naming the rules makes it even easier. These are the “design patterns” of debugging.

My favorite rule was Quit Thinking and Look. I definitely tend to overanalyze when faced with a bug or otherwise difficult problem. Thinking about a problem is certainly useful, but it can be far more useful to experiment. Why speculate about what part of the software is responsible for an error when you can simply use your debugging tools to figure it out?

This book is short, useful, entertaining, and inexpensive. Read it!