Debugging Microsoft .Net 2.0 Applications

This is how a book should be written. This book is full of tips and technical advice. It points you to more resources to expand your knowledge. It gives a lot of high quality code that you can use both in production and as an example. The book starts with chapters about the debugging process and the setup. Then it talks about proactive programming techniques. And the book concludes with guidance and tips for using the Visual Studio debugger and WinDBG, SOS and ADPlus. The last thing I want to mention is that John Robbins has a worderful blog that you should subscribe to if you are interested in the subject and you can ask him questions about his book. I was always happy with his replies. Enjoy!

I bought this book over a year ago, with about 8 other books, and had ignored it. I picked this off my shelf last week, while on a support call, and took it with me while on a short personal trip. I learned so much from this little book about the improvements in .Net 2.0 for debugging, and how to use the tools in visual studio - in extremely productive ways, I would recommend you buy this book immediately and use it for the rest of your programming career! I found the book extremly well written and it had me laughing and reading it out loud to non-computer people for the great humour that John Robbins put within the pages. I have a problem at work, dealing with the clipboard and the need to have a static thread to use the functions, and on page 119 he cites that exact issue and how he resolved it. I have not finished the book, - I am almost half way. The part about setting up a Symbol server went a bit beyond what I think I can do within my employers site, and it sounds like a lot of work, however his point is that the mini dumps that a user can send you can be loaded and you can pinpoint the exception with all of the data values, and call stack that was loaded at the time - which allows you to see what the problem was. Potentially saving hundreds of hours! I also noted that there were a few links in the book pointing to the gotdotnet website,which I know has been reduced to very few remaining links (Microsoft has abandoned) - so some of this book (a few lines at this point) is going out of date due to the reliance on some web links still being there. I personally find the parts about FxCop and the Code Coverage in VS 2005 as a good piece of instruction on establishing your own code rules - and if you want to have standards enforced - it will help you see how you can improve on your code. If you are avoiding improving your standards, then you can skip that - I would encourage you to learn from it rather than skip it. If you are working in .Net 2.0 (or higher) as a developer - I cannot recommend this book highly enough. I had kind of ignored it on my shelf, and that will not be the case from now on. It has started to travel with me. I read it every chance I get so I can finish it and benefit from the incredibly practical examples and enjoyment of really great writing, that can spice up the book with real humour that everyone can understand. Outstanding!

This is a great debugging book. It is very analytic, detailed and extremely useful for simple developers, as well as for people who are debugging specialists. I am not giving 5 stars for the simple reason that it requires extensive setup in order to follow all the examples. In fact, setting up a VPC with all components necessary for using Source Server took me 2 days. IMHO it would have been great if a CD with a VPC image was available for download to save us from the pain.

I'd like to second the initial review: this is an excellent book. It covers the important topics about debugging, from project level issues (setting symbols and source servers) to code level issues (how to spot handle leaks with WinDBG). The book is engaging and easy to understand. It may even make you like debugging! Some highlights include the great coverage of Visual studio and WinDBG. I use it regularly to look up a command or a tip-and-trick. I didn't give it five stars because some of the topics are too developed. For example, I didn't need or want the long explanation about writing FxCop rules. I also found the book light on topics that are relevant to debugging such as instrumentation (perf counters and logging). Overall this is book worth reading if you want to improve your development skills.

As somebody who debugs applications for a living, I found this an outstanding resource to both refresh my memory, give me new tips and tricks, and provide a frame of reference for sharing this knowledge with others. If you do not already have a symbol server set up for your organization, then you should order this book today for the simple step-by-step instructions for how to do this. This is an absolute requirement for success, yet for some reason seems to be consistently overlooked and considered a "black art" or something that only the largest of organizations has the resources to execute on. John debunks this myth handily, and provides the best resource I know on overcoming this initial hurdle to greater success. I heartily recommend this book to anyone involved in software development.