The Basic Tools Presented by: Robert E., & Jonathan Chase

The Power of Plain Text What is it?  Printable characters in a form that can be read directly by people Can be structured (xml, html) Possible to achieve self-describing data stream independent of its creator

Plain Text (cont.) Advantages  Insurance against obsolescence Potential use extension Able to parse with partial knowledge of its format  Leverage Many different computing environments operate on plain text (compiler, editors, SCCS, etc.)  Easier testing Easy to modify synthetic test data without special tools Analysis through a scripting tool

Plain Text (cont.) Disadvantages  Potentially occupy more space than compressed binary  Computationally more expensive to interpret and process plain text

Shell Games “For a programmer manipulating files of test, that workbench is the command shell.”

Shell (cont.) Shell  Able to build complex macro commands  Automate tasks GUI  Limited functionality “What you see is what you get”  Can’t create customized macro tools Windows  Windows cmd-line utilities are limited compared to Unix  Try Cygwin UWIN Perl Power Tools

Power Editing Know one editor very well including its advanced features Editor should be  Configurable to your preferences  Extensible to new languages  Programmable with macros or scripting  Able to create templates Language specific features  Syntax highlighting  Auto-completion  Auto-indentation  Document boiler plate Increases productivity

Source Code Control Systems Project-wide time machine that can return back to a previous state Advantages  Undo mistakes  Track changes  Identify of your software  Keep track of compiler and OS versions  Generate branches in the development tree  Concurrent development  Builds that are automatic and repeatable  Automatic regression tests

Debugging No one writes perfect software… Debugging is problem solving and should be approached in that manner. Focus on the problem and not the blame. Don’t Panic.

Where to Begin Make sure the code compiled cleanly without warnings. Ensure your observations are accurate. Clarify all bug reports–particularly third party reports.

Debugging Strategies Visualize Your Data Tracing Rubber Ducking Process of Elimination

Debugging Questions Is the problem being reported a direct result of the underlying bug, or merely a symptom? Is the bug really in the compiler? Is it in the OS? Or is it in your code? If you explained this problem in detail to a coworker, what would you say? If the suspect code passes its unit tests, are the tests complete enough? What happens if you run the unit test with this data? Do the conditions that caused this bug exist anywhere else in the system?

The Element of Surprise “Don’t Assume It–Prove It”

Text Manipulation Tools  Awk  Sed  Python  Tcl  Ruby  Perl

Applying Text Manipulation Database schema maintenance Java property access Test data generation Book Writing C to Object Pascal interface Generating Web documentation

Code Generators Passive code Generators  create freestanding results Active code generators  create reproducible results Code generators can generate more than code  Eg. Html, xml, plain text