Reading Tea Leaves: The Fine Art of Debugging

By: Danny Thorpe

Abstract: You can do a lot with today's advanced debugging tools, but there are still times when the program ends up so far off the map that its beyond the help of any mechanical tool. To figure out when, where, and why the program went astray, sometimes you just have to roll up your sleeves and break out the CPU view and assume the mind meld position. Learn to think like the processor, navigate high level data structures in raw hex dumps, recognize encrypted blonds and brunettes at a glance, and manipulate the time streams with your bare hands.

Danny Thorpe is a Borland Chief Scientist responsible for strategic research in software development tools for the Microsoft® Windows®, Microsoft® .NET Framework, and Red Hat® Linux® platforms. He was a member of the team that created the Delphi RAD environment in 1995, a founding member of the Borland Kylix project on the Linux platform, and is now the Delphi compiler architect and lead engineer of the Delphi for .NET development team at Borland. He also had a hand in the creation of "Space Cadet Pinball" distributed by Microsoft, and "Full Tilt! Pinball" distributed by Maxis.

dthorpe@borland.com