Software Diagnostics Institute

Some bugtations are featured in this full-color book:

Dumps, Bugs and Debugging Forensics

More bugtations from Malcolm McCaffery

Theory behind bugtations:

Bugtations collected by Dmitry Vostokov:

"There's no such thing as" heisenbug;
"And what to us seems merest accident
Springs from the deepest source of" computation.

Friedrich Schiller, Early Dramas

"It requires a very unusual mind to undertake the analysis of the obvious" crash.

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

"If you find the" crash dump, "perhaps others may find the explanation."

Sherlock Holmes, The Problem of Thor Bridge

"O" engineers, "throw light on this error."

Leonardo da Vinci, The Notebooks

"The great tragedy of" Software: "the slaying of a beautiful" program "by an ugly" bug.

Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays

"I admit that" debugging "is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing."

Aldous Leonard Huxley

"Thank you for not dividing by zero."

Unknown

"Thank you for checking for NULL pointers."

Dmitry Vostokov

Debugging "will one day be as necessary for efficient" programming "as the ability to read and write" code.

Herbert George Wells

"There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious" bug.

Sherlock Holmes, The Boscombe Valley Mystery

"Coincidences, in general, are great stumbling-blocks in the way of" debugging.

Edgar Allan Poe, The Murders in the Rue Morgue

The crash dump "is the message".

Marshall McLuhan, The medium is the message

"Sir, please believe me, it's the first time this has ever happened. Have another try, don't get upset. You know our" Programs "are" TESTED.

Jean-Pierre Petit, Adventures of Archibald Higgins: Euclid Rules O.K.?

"... and now remains
That we find out the cause of this effect,
Or rather say, the cause of this defect,
For this effect defective comes by cause."

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Crash dump analysis "is anticipated with" joy, "performed with" eagerness, "and bragged about forever."

Anonymous

Debugging "of today reminds one of the Tower of Babel, for few" engineers "can follow profitably the" internals of components "other than their own, and even there they sometimes made to feel like strangers."

George Sarton, The Study of the History of Mathematics

"A good" bugfix "is one that makes us wiser."

Yuri Manin, A Course in Mathematical Logic

"A new" bugfix "is often a" new "error."

Malesherbes, Pensées et maximes

Engineers' source codes "reveal their characters."

Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, Reflexions and Maximes

"A perfectly healthy" program ", it is true, is extremely rare."

Henry David Thoreau, The Journal of Henry D. Thoreau

"Crash dumps are fossils" of computations.

Thomas Monahan and Dmitry Vostokov, Crash Dump Analysis for System Administrators and Support Engineers (Chapter 1: The Origin of Crash Dumps)

"I like people who can do" debugging.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

"One can best feel in dealing with" systems "how primitive" debugging "still is."

Albert Einstein, Communication to Leó Szilárd

"You can take better care of your" code "than another can."

Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals

Comments "are not" code.

Gertrude Stein, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

"The only way to read" code "without being bored is to" browse "it at random and, having found something that interests you, close the" browser "and meditate.”

Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne, Mes écarts

"Think before you" debug!

Pythagoras, Teachings

"But perhaps the" OS "is suspended on the" finger "of some" developer.

Anton Chekhov, Notebook

"Some" processes "are very busy, and yet do nothing."

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs

"There are many rare" crashes "in the World, which Fortune never brings to Light" again.

Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs

APIs "govern the world."

John Selden, Table Talk

Opcodes "- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a" manual ", how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

Nathaniel Hawthorne, American Notebooks

"A" code "never — well, hardly ever — shakes off its" legacy "and its formation. In spite of all changes in and extensions of and additions to its" base ", and indeed rather pervading and governing these, there will still persist the old" code.

John Langshaw Austin, Philosophical Papers: A Plea For Excuses

"The art of not" coding "is extremely important. It consists in our not taking up whatever happens to be occupying the" management "public at the time."

Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena: On Reading and Books

"An excellent precept for" programmers: "have a clear idea of all the" functions "and expressions you need, and you will find them."

Ximénès Doudan, Pensées et fragments suivis des révolutions du goût

Crash dump analysis "does not consist merely in" peeking "the memory and enlightening the understanding. Its main business should be to direct the" Customer.

Joseph Joubert, Pensées

Exception "is what we see at a glance."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

"In the beginning there was the crash."

Dmitry Vostokov

"Everything is memory dump."

Dmitry Vostokov

Crash dumps "have another hypnotic effect. Because they are not immediately understood, they, like certain jokes, are suspected of holding in some sort of magic embrace the secret of" troubleshooting, "or at least some of its more" difficult "parts."

Scott Milross Buchanan, Poetry and Mathematics

Debug "at whim!" Debug "at whim!"

Randall Jarrell, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables

"Read" code "at whim!"

Randall Jarrell, A Sad Heart at the Supermarket: Essays & Fables

"The trouble with" memory dumps "is that we have examined only the very small ones. Maybe all the exciting stuff happens at really big" memory dumps, "ones we can't even begin to think about in any very definite way. So maybe all the action is really inaccessible and we're just fiddling around. Our brains have evolved to get us out of the rain, find where the berries are, and keep us from getting killed. Our brains did not evolve to help us grasp really large" memory dumps "or to look at things in a hundred thousand" memory locations.

Ronald Lewis Graham, quoted in "Computers, Pattern, Chaos and Beauty" by Clifford A. Pickover

"Some of the greatest advances in" debugging "have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain;"

Aldous Leonard Huxley, Jesting Pilate

"I'm gonna do better than learn to" troubleshoot, "I'm gonna learn to" debug.

Alexander Murray Palmer Haley, Roots

"If the" modules "in my" process "don’t work with or without" yours, "I cannot blame" you.

Francisco Alves, "If the brakes in my car don’t work with or without petrol in the fuel tank, I cannot blame the fuel"

"Good" troubleshooters "see analogies between" applications "or" services, "the very best ones see analogies between analogies."

Stefan Banach

"His brain, trained by long years of high" design "and plain" architecture, "had become too subtle, too refined an instrument for" debugging.

Stephen Leacock, Literary Lapses

"... those who have a natural talent for" troubleshooting "are generally quick at every other kind of knowledge ..." debugging "is a kind of knowledge in which the best natures should be trained, and which must not be given up."

Plato, The Republic

"The only sure thing about" computation "is that it will" stop.

Bret Harte, The Outcasts of Poker Flat, The Luck of Roaring Camp

"On Mind-Body problem and Afterlife: if Mind is merely a computation then what is left is a memory dump in the Body."

Dmitry Vostokov

"You rule the" debugger, "not the" debugger "you."

John Dryden, The Hind and the Panther

"The moment you have worked out" a code fix , "start checking it - it probably isn't right."

Edmund Callis Berkeley, Computers and Automation magazine, Right Answers: A Short Guide for Obtaining Them

Trace "back a little to" debug "further."

John Clarke (1596-1658), Proverbs: English and Latine

"It takes a wise" engineer "to know when not to" debug.

Baltasar Gracián, The Art of Worldly Wisdom

[Software] Defects "have a character of their own, but they also partake of" a program "character;" programs "have a character of" their "own, but" they "also partake of the world's character."

Oliver Wolf Sacks, Awakenings

Bugteriology is the study of bugteria. "It comprises the identification, classification and characterization of" bugterial "species." Bugteria "are identified by their properties, for example their looks, what" memory dumps "they can" appear in "or not" appear in, "what" bugs "they require for growth, what" effects "they produce, etc. To study morphology, that is the" phenotype "of" bugteria, "a" debugger "is used."

Virtual Museum of Bacteria, Bacteriology: the study of bacteria

Computation "is a succession of" steps. "To" compute "each one is to succeed."

Corita Kent

"Nothing would be more tiresome than" coding "and" debugging "if" evolution "had not made them a pleasure as well as a necessity."

Voltaire, Dialogues philosophiques

"One of the pleasures of reading old" memory dumps "is the knowledge that they need no answer."

George Gordon Byron

Blue Color "of" Crash.

Ernest Lehman, Sweet Smell of Success

"Impatient" engineers "always" debug "too late."

Jean Gwenaël Dutourd, Le Fond et la Forme, essai alphabétique sur la morale et sur le style

"To" debug "is to" code "twice."

Joseph Joubert, Pensées

"How can you say my" computation "is not a success?" Has it "not for more than sixty" days "got enough to" process "and escaped being" crashed?

Logan Pearsall Smith, Last Words

"Avoid" crashes and hangs, "but do not seek" total stability "- nothing so expensive as" total stability.

Sydney Smith, A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith by his daughter, Lady Holland, with a Selection from his Letters

"... the" debugger "(my almighty" application ") ..."

Thomas Jefferson, TO JAMES MONROE, Paris Mar. 18. 1785

"The" computer "is the only place where" a crash "comes before" hang.

Anonymous American Saying

"Seven" debugging "nights."

The interpretation of 0x7D9 (2009), The Year of Debugging

"Diamonds are forever but bugs are an error."

Narasimha Vedala, Dumps, Bugs and Debugging Forensics: The Adventures of Dr. Debugalov

"Breaking the" Bug: Debugging "as a Natural Phenomenon"

Daniel Clement Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

A pointer "tends to corrupt, and" a direct pointer "corrupts" directly.

John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton, Lord Acton's dictum

Old Bugs and the Men Who Debug Them
How to Avoid Crashes and Hangs or I’ve Never Met a Bug I Liked
Blue Screen: What’s in it for You?
What to Say When You Debug: Powerful New Techniques to Program your Success!
Redmond: The View from Greenland
Fabulous Small Bugs
Better Never to Have Coded: The Harm of Coding
Code for Impact
Whose Bug? The Clash between Software Vendors

Implausible debugging book titles, Part 1

"To achieve great" fixes "we must" debug "as though we were never going to" stop.

Luc de Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargues, Reflexions and Maximes

"It is better to offer no" fix "than a" wrong "one."

George Washington, Letter to Harriet Washington

Crash "must be distinguished from" hang "with which it is often confounded."

Sydney Smith, A Memoir of the Reverend Sydney Smith by his daughter, Lady Holland, with a Selection from his Letters

A bug "is part of this" computation "and not of the next."

Elizabeth (Asquith) Bibesco, Haven

Bugs "are useful to attract attention to" programs.

Mandell Creighton, Life and Letters of Mandell Creighton by Louise Creighton

"Where are you" debugging "tonight?"

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, The Diaries of Evelyn Waugh, edited by Michael Davie

"Look for" a bug "in everything and you will find it."

Pierre-Jules Renard, Journal

"For it is not enough to have a good" debugger: "one must use it well."

René Descartes, Discourse on the Method

"Everything is in a state of" memory.

Attributed to Heraclitus of Ephesus

Crash dump "is patient."

German proverb

"One must look for one" bug "only, to find many."

Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living: Diaries 1935-1950

"It is a terrible thing for" an engineer "to find out suddenly that all his life he has been" writing "nothing but the" code.

Oscar Wilde,
The Importance of Being Earnest

"Some" tester, "I believe, has said that true pleasure lies not in the discovery of" a bug, "but in the search for it."

Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy,
Anna Karenina

"Don't" guess "it, get a larger" dump.

Anthony's Law of Force

Software objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that crash and those that hang.

Russell Wayne Baker

"It is easier to know" programming "in general than to understand one" program "in particular."

François de La Rochefoucauld, Maxims

"A" fix "can break a" bug "in two."

The Talmud

"Of all days, the day on which one has not" debugged "is the one most surely wasted."

Nicolas Chamfort, Maximes et Pensées

"We have in fact, two kinds of" engineers, "side by side: one that" design, "but do not" code, "and another that" code, "but seldom" design.

Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays

"The first rule of" debugging "is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of" debugging "is to sit tight and wait till you" hit "a" breakpoint.

George Pólya, How to Solve It

"[...] the first man who noticed the analogy between a" dump "and" an observation "made a notable advance in the history of thought."

Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World

"To" debug "is proper to man."

François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

"Oh, he is a good" troubleshooter, "but he has no power of" debugging!"

Charles Darwin, The life and letters of Charles Darwin, Volume 1

Dumps "are meaningless without" symbols "to interpret them."

Raymond Arthur Lyttleton, Quoted in Astroparticle Physics, page 50

"A trace is a narrative, the story of a computation."

Dmitry Vostokov, Software Tracing and Logging: Architecture, Design, Implementation and Analysis Patterns

"Touched by an" exception.

Touched by an Angel

"The real" debugging "begins only after hitting" a button.

Anonymous

I'm stored, "therefore I am."

René Descartes, Cogito ergo sum

To be is to crash and to be crashed.

Dmitry Vostokov

The road to immortality is paved with memory dumps.

Dmitry Vostokov

Most bugs are permanent.

Dmitry Vostokov, Variation on a theme "Most objects are temporary"

I don't read mere books. I analyze memory dumps. Books are memory dumps. Memory dumps are books.

Dmitry Vostokov, Variation on a theme "A book is a memory dump"

"You" run code "from beginning to end. You" debug code "the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach" the beginning.

Harold Sydney Geneen

"... beauty" in debugging "begins as consolation for what can't be" debugged.

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia

"A little" debugging "is a dangerous thing;" Debug "deep, or" ...

Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism

Computation "is a brief gasp between one" crash dump "and another."

Ezra Weston Loomis Pound, Subbugtated from Poetry: The Basics (Chapter 3), Jeffrey Wainwright

"Simplifying computing with a" crash.

Dmitry Vostokov's excavative exclamation upon hearing a marketing slogan "I have a crush on you"

"Memory dumps are facts".

Dmitry Vostokov's statement upon hearing "Evolution is a fact."

Delusion of "difference and repetition" in debugging.

Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition

"I have so many questions to ask" this memory dump.

The Day the Earth Stood Still (2008 film)

Software "bugs have been around for" decades.

A bugtated quotation from one website dedicated to bed bugs

Debugging "with a purpose."

Unknown Debugger

"Crito, I own a" handle "to Æsculapius. Will you remember to" close it?

Last words of Socrates

"Stop, driver, stop!" Did he forget a stop code?

Sherlock Holmes, A Study in Scarlet, Part 1, 3: The Lauriston Gardens Mystery

"The highest perfection of" debugging "is found in the union of order and anarchy."

Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, What is Property?

A virtualization is virtualization.

Peter Brook, The Empty Space

Dump analysis matters, but business results matter more.

Aaron Erickson, The Nomadic Developer

The clash of titans over the bit of memory.

Dmitry Vostokov, Empires of the Code

Tender buttons that crash: objects, messages, apartments.

Gertrude Stein, The Tender buttons: objects, food, rooms

... science is in reality a classification and analysis of the contents of the memory;

Karl Pearson, The Grammar of Science

assert (*p + *p == 2 * (*p) + 1); // for sufficiently fast processors

The reinterpretation of 1 + 1 = 3, Dmitry Vostokov

Crash Dump is a double buzzword.

Dmitry Vostokov

The whole code is a series of balanced defects. Fix one and the program crashes.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Madness, the absence of memory dumps.

Michel Foucault

I report to Memory................................................................

Dmitry Vostokov

I am because we memory dump and because we memory dump therefore I am.

African proverb

The engineer who has no tincture for memory dump analysis goes through life cycle imprisoned in the prejudices derived from coding... (The Problems of Computation. Chapter 0x5: The Value of Memory Dump Analysis)

Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Chapter XV: The Value of Philosophy

A Momentary Lapse of Computation.

Pink Floyd, A Momentary Lapse of Reason

You will debug like a dog for no good reason.

Ernest Hemingway, Notes on the Next Debugging

The Past is a Memory Dump.

Dmitry Vostokov, Founder of Memory Dump Worldview, the philosophy of Memoidealism, and the religion of Memorianity (Memory Religion)

Whilst debugging leads to wealth
and will keep you in good health,
so its best to be contented with your bugs.

Debug, boys, debug and be contented,
As long as you've enough to buy a computer.
The man, you may rely, will be wealthy by and by,
If he'll only put his finger to the debugger.

Harry Clifton (1824-1872)

God Bless the Debugger and his relations and keep us in our proper winstations!

18th century English verse

Crash dump makes noise.

Suzanne Vega, Blood Makes Noise

... the functions you meet on the way up, ... you're going to meet the same functions on the way down. Not always...

Jackie Gleason

A memory dump "analysis is never finished, it is only abandoned"

Paul Valéry

Debugging is defaulting.

Dmitry Vostokov, "It's time to stop faulting!" programme from the independent Irish political candidate for the next general election who was writing programs in the past

“I like you,” she said suddenly. “You believe in miracles."

Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

"... he who has not been in" support "does not know what" debugging "is."

Attributed to Leo Tolstoy, by Adam Ulam, The Bolsheviks

"If you want to be thought a" debugger ", always" talk about bugs.

Logan Pearsall Smith

"... the vital point for you to understand is that all" tracing "must be conducted with the creation of" solution "in mind. That is what must colour and control your selection of" tracing "events."

Michael Allen, The Truth About Writing

"The people behind your" crashes.

MAFIA

Memoretics "opens a unique window on" software "affairs".

John H. Hedley, The Challenges of Intelligence Analysis, Strategic Intelligence, Volume 1

"... further" applications "suffered from over-expansion owing to the exhaustion of their" computational "opportunities..."

Graeme Snooks, The Dynamic Society: The Sources of Global Change

Memory Dumps "have" not "changed in the past two decades."

Bill Gates

Dumps (The story of a plain app and its struggles in computation).

Dumps by Meade (Chambers, 1905)

The Presence of The Memory Dump: Code Resonance and the Habits of Debugging.

Rupert Sheldrake

Does God play keyboard?

Dmitry Vostokov, Memoriarch, Founder of Memory Religion (Memorianity)

Making Software A Better World.

Dmitry Vostokov, Memory Dump Analysis Services

Program history has two sides, a computational and a human.

Philip Schaff

Word of Memory.

Dmitry Vostokov, Memoriarch

He was debugging for 7 years and when he stopped and looked around he saw only 2 people left from the team of 50 strong technical support engineers.

Folktale

They said : The dump came from the wrong site
He's a page from the end of the dump
I said : The dump came from the right site
Took me just one look
<...>
With a little debugging
You will survive
With a little debugging
You will get by
Do what you want
Go your own way
in Technical Support.

Modern Talking

Every debugger I know has trouble debugging.
Talent is helpful in debugging, but guts are absolutely necessary.
With failure comes a dump.

Joseph Heller

Thus, a man who intends keeping pointers naturally tries to get as good debuggers as he can ... .

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species

Philosophy is about memories, people's memories.

Dmitry Vostokov, The Last Presocratic, Founder of Memodealism

Debugging before profits.

Dmitry Vostokov

Always imitate the behavior of the working program when it is crashing.

George Meredith

Software diagnosis requires intelligence.

Dmitry Vostokov

Computation is short. Debugging is long. Problem is fleeting. Troubleshooting is risky. Diagnosis is difficult.

Hippocrates, Aphorisms

... international cyberracketeers bent upon gaining profit through a game of cyberarming the world to cyberfight ....

Senator Gerald Nye, Nevada State Journal, October 4, 1934

If debugging were profitable, everybody would be debugging.

Thomas More

... what an ideal engineer should be in the eyes of his contemporaries: [...] a man of hardware and a child of software.

Amir Alexander, From Voyagers to Martyrs

It is necessary to know at every moment how to find the particular link in the wait chain which must be grasped with all one’s strength in order to keep the whole chain in place and prepare to move on resolutely to the next link.

Lenin

The cyber-mercenaries and parasites of the Press, [...] for to them the price of a paragraph is more than the value of sincerity.

Blavatsky, 1877, Isis Unveiled

You can't blame a programmer for what the characters say.

Truman Capote

Software: the parts of a computer that can be dumped.

Jeff Pesis

When I write correct working code it's a mistake.

Dmitry Vostokov

"Something is rotten in the state of" memory.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

"I came, I saw, I" debugged.

Julius Caesar

"You may not be interested in" malware ", but" malware "is interested in you".

Leon Trotsky

"Saboteurs disguise themselves by over fulfilling the" buffer.

Joseph Stalin, quoted from William Zimmerman, Ruling Russia, page 294

"Experiment is a question put to" memory.

Adopted by Charles Sanders Peirce from Julius Adolph Stöckhardt

"... mistakes are fatal." Kernel "space isn't friendly; it kills you. And there are no second chances".

Charles Stross, Singularity Sky

"What is one man's truth is another man's" conspiracy.

Multiple sources

"Out with a bang, back with a" dump.

An ad for Damo and Ivor

"A lovely tale of" computation "we'll read".

John Keats, "Sleep and Poetry"

"- This is abnormal. All people want to sleep" after debugging.

Yulian Semyonov, "Tenderness", translated from Russian

Debugged "every day, throughout the day."

From M&S bakery

Updates... "how much within that sound there lies
To make a" user's "heart awake,
How many echoes does it give and take."

(A slightly modified Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" verse)

"Sign up for our " product "and" we "get 750 hours of" Debug.

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