software design

This book is a book for the advanced programmer who says "I already know how to build a halfway decent windows app, how do I take my debugging to the next level and deliver truly good apps?"

This book covers real-world debugging issues that plague programmers and are difficult to solve, such as multi-threading and memory issues amongst others. Also this book has several entertaining real-world scenarios that can help give you perspective on debugging.

However this book is not for the beginner, a solid grasp of programming is essential for this book. However those with a good grasp of what programming is about with at least a basic knowledge of .NET will be right at home with this book.

This book contains a lot of useful information not only about debugging Windows and .NET applications, but also about real-life problems, scenarios and solutions. The author shares his stories that sometimes are very entertaining and useful.

Although this is exceptionally good book, I wish it had more content for the specifics of .NET debugging. I think another missing topic is 'debugging mixed managed and unmanaged code'.

After reading most of the book, I disliked only one thing, which is author's strong opinion about using exceptions in the applications.

The original was a gem, and I used it extensively, but the code and tools that came with that version are now out of date. The .NET version adds tremendous value with a whole new suite of power debugging tools that just weren't there before. Although a few of the introductory chapters are similar, it's a huge overhaul of the original once you get into the heart of the book.

I've been using the native code sections of this book, rather than the .NET sections. Most of the book, expecially the power debugging stuff, is still focused on native code. However, I don't think the "Below the belt..." review did this book justice. If you are at all serious about debugging on Windows platforms, read and use this book.