Autumn 91 - MACINTOSH DEBUGGING: A WEIRD JOURNEY
MACINTOSH DEBUGGING: A WEIRD JOURNEY INTO THE BELLY
OF THE BEAST
BO3B JOHNSON AND FRED HUXHAM
ADAPTED FROM THEIR TALK AT THE WWDC BY DAVE
JOHNSON
Macintosh debugging is a strange and difficult task. This article provides a collection
of tried-and-true debugging techniques Bo3b and Fred discussed at Apple's Worldwide
Developers Conference in May 1991. These techniques can ease your debugging woes
and make your life a lot simpler. They're guaranteed to help you find your bugs earlier
on, saving you hours of suffering.
The first thing you should know is that debugging is hard . Drinking gallons of
Mountain Dew won't help much, nor will seeking magic formulas or spreading fresh
goat entrails around your keyboard and chanting. The only way to get better at it is to
do it a lot, and even then it's still hard. What we're going to talk about are a number of
techniques that will make debugging a little bit easier.