very very interesting presentation about debuggers

[Kent Sarikaya]

This is an incredible lecture at google tech talks about this really incredible debugger. When you see it, you say wow, why wasn't this done before.
It just seems so logical and presents options and ways of tracing a program that is just so intuitive. He is a computer science Professor at Tuft's University, if you don't read that or miss the intro, you might think he is a prop comic.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3897010229726822034&q=tech+talk+debugger&total=20&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=3

[Theo Gottwald]

Really intresting to me.
Hopefully PB - next Generation will have such a "rol-time-back" debugger.
While it may have to handle quite a lot of data.

It may be too much data for some sort of apps on long runs.

Also intresting, that they have more videos on other stuff.
For example, take a closer look on the XBOX Security System.

"Security" mean in this case not the safety of the user, but the safety of M$'s profit.
I doubt they have ever put  the same amount of time into safety of user-data.

[Charles Pegge]

A very entertaining lecture on a difficult subject, it certainly captures the imagination, tracking every single action of a program through time. The data generated, from a large program must be huge. But it made me question what debugging 'hooks' could be built into a language to facilitate the testing and debugging process, for instance: limit checking for each variable, (since many of his examples involved null pointers).

I think most of the work has to be done at the start of the coding process. One should only write blocks of code which can be easily tested - and write unit tests for them as you proceed - which requires considerable self-discipline. But if it  eliminates long debugging trails then that is a good incentive.

With assembler, I find that frequent testing during the coding process is essential - since bugs can come at you from any quarter, incremental testing is often the only practical way to isolate errors.

[Kent Sarikaya]

Glad you guys liked it. There is also a very very interesting lecture along with many others there. I just go to google video and enter "google tech talk" once a month or so and always find very very interesting things to watch.

Another new one that makes you think and appreciate what has happened and how it was put together is the one on networking:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6972678839686672840

This is my favorite lecture so far, you guys will really love the creative thinking and applications here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8246463980976635143

[Petr Schreiber]

Kent,

thanks a lot for the video links.
Using of human power is interesting, little bit scary too


Thanks,
Petr