Debugging Quotes

Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it. (Brian Kernighan)

If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to start with.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.

Brian Kernighan

Building technical systems involves a lot of hard work and specialized knowledge: languages and protocols, coding and debugging, testing and refactoring.

Jesse James Garrett

There has never been an unexpectedly short debugging period in the history of computers.

Steven Levy

The vision we have of conversational programming takes in much more than rapid turn around time and convenient debugging aids: our most interesting programs are never wrong and never final. [...] What is new is the requirement to make variable in our languages what we had previously taken as fixed. I do not refer to new data classes now, but to variables whose values are programs or parts of programs, syntax or parts of syntax, and regimes of control.

Alan Perlis

People also underestimate the time they spend debugging. They underestimate how much time they can spend chasing a long bug. With testing, I know straight away when I added a bug. That lets me fix the bug immediately, before it can crawl off and hide. There are few things more frustrating or time wasting than debugging. Wouldn't it be a hell of a lot quicker if we just didn't create the bugs in the first place?

Martin Fowler

If debugging is the process of removing software bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in.

Edsger W. Dijkstra

Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

Brian Kernighan

Even perfect program verification can only establish that a program meets its specification. [...] Much of the essence of building a program is in fact the debugging of the specification.

Fred Brooks

The most frequent complaint is that it's hard. True. it's a hard game to win Also, many people ask me how to use the secret debugging commands, apparently under the impression that I'll tell them. (Graham Nelson)

I do as much debugging as possible on the Mac, but I occasionally must debug problems in the PC world, which is significantly slower.

Robert Patterson

I sat at the computer at work, debugging. I was bored. It was afternoon. I was twenty-two. It was June. Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, thunderheads move in almost every afternoon between May and early July. They materialize, darken the day, spit a few drops, open the sky with lightning, then disappear like so many dreams.

Derrick Jensen

Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging.

Eric S. Raymond

Science requires a society because even people who are trying to be good thinkers love their own thoughts and theories - much of the debugging has to be done by others.

Alan Kay