Software Generalist

Comments in italics are mine and express my own views, thoughts and opinions

Developer’s Guide to Debugging by M. Wloka, et al.:

An application as a set of processes (p. 103)

strace (Linux) and truss (Solaris) to trace OS calls (pp. 104 - 106) - On Windows we can trace API while debugging using WinDbg extensions: http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/2007/01/03/tracing-win32-api-while-debugging-a-process/. Process Monitor can also be used to trace API subsets like File and Registry I/O.

Compiler bugs (pp. 106 - 107)

Debugger and compiler incompatibilities (p. 107)

Link-time bugs (Chapter 9)

Missing symbols (pp. 112 - 113) - On Windows search strategies like Explorer Search and dumpbin can be useful for dynamic linking errors

Advanced Windows Debugging by M. Hewardt and D. Pravat:

The importance of lazy initialization and associated impersonation bugs (pp. 347 - 354)

Concurrent Programming on Windows by J. Duffy:

.NET programs are multithreaded from the start (gc runs on a separate thread) (p. 79) - We can see this in WinDbg when attaching it to a .NET app container

Thread as a virtual processor metaphor (p. 80)

Thread as an execution context (p. 81)

Non-local transfer of control; context switch, exception handling, hardware interrupt (borrows kernel stack), DPC and APC (pp. 84 - 85)

DPC and APC run in the context of the current thread (p. 85)

The differences of CLR (managed) threads: just additional CLR information is stored on per OS thread basis (p. 86)

Explicit threading: explicit thread creation (p. 87) with thread pool alternative (p.88)

Software Factories by J. Greenfield, et. al.:

Failure of enterprise data modeling during terminal era of 70s - 80s (p. 13)

Bifurcation of of software into personal and enterprise with the advent of PCs (pp. 15 - 16)

The notion of the phenomenon of cheaper products eventually displacing market leaders after improvement over time (p. 16)

Thick client: business rules on both tiers (p. 17)

The growth of packaged application industry and outsourcing after client-server era (pp. 18 - 21)

Software Engineering Foundations: A Software Science Perspective, by Y. Wang:

SE principles to counter SE constraints (cognitive, organizational and resource) (p. 2)

Software as a unique abstract structure (p. 7)

The notion of the intelligent behavioural metaphor (p. 7)

Inductive math-based methodology of theoretical software problems vs. deductive experiment-driven for empirical problems: both must be used for SE problems (1st Law of SE)  (p.

The need for mathematical modeling of software system architecture and software behaviours (p. 9)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -

Comments in italics are mine and express my own views, thoughts and opinions

Developer’s Guide to Debugging by M. Wloka, et al.:

Strategy of memory profiling (p. 45) - good summary of a general approach broken down in several steps.

The need to have an estimated and / or expected memory usage value (p. 45) - customers always ask me the question whether the certain amount of VM consuption is normal

Phases of execution and measurements at phase boundaries (p. 47)

Memory growth as a function of input data (linear, logarithmic, quadratic, …, exponential) (p. 48)

Stop points (pp. 48 - 49) - I also recommend to dump process memory to a memory dump file at regular intervals.

top tool from Cygwin (p. 49)

Using Task Manager (pp. 50 - 51) - Actually there are several memory columns for processes and it is important to choose the most appropriate. For example, Commit Size also includes memory allocated in page file as well. The following picture shows various columns in Vista: 

Deallocation not releasing memory to OS (pp. 51 - 52) - On Windows it might not decrease the size of VM but might decrease the size of committed memory and reduce page file usage. I need to test this: writing this down in my hardback Idea: Blogger’s notebook. Also on Windows there can be several separate process heaps with their own lifetime semantics. 

Memory profilers: Massif, AQtime and mpatrol (pp. 53 - 54) - On Windows you can use Gflags and select user mode stack trace database and then use WinDbg: http://www.dumpanalysis.org/blog/index.php/2007/08/06/crash-dump-analysis-patterns-part-20a/

Concurrent Programming on Windows by J. Duffy:

Association of a critical region with static lexical scope (p. 43)

Orphaned lock (p. 45) - I have seen it many times. Looks like good candidate to be included in my crash dump analysis patterns.

Coarse- vs. fine-grained locks, false sharing (pp. 46 - 47)

CAS instructions (compare and swap) (p. 48)

Strict alternation algorithm - critical region implementation (pp. 49 - 50)

Dekker’s and Dijkstra’s algorithm - critical region implementation (pp. 50 - 53)

Out-of-order execution breaks DD’s algorithm (p. 53)

Software Factories by J. Greenfield, et. al.:

Problem: small market for vertical focus and domain knowledge concentration in end-user organizations (p. xviii)

Ideal product built by an individual is an exception (pp. xviii - xix) - I think this depends on the project size an complexity.

Tools help with mechanistic tasks (p. xix)

Generative Programming book (p.  xxiii) - I need to finish reading it, I started 5 years ago…

Tools automate and help to focus on creativity (p. xxvii) - T&D tools help in focusing on creative part of T&D  

Architecturally driven and contextually aware tools for specific domains (p. xxix)

Software Engineering Foundations: A Software Science Perspective, by Y. Wang:

I bought this book last year and started reading now to get the most possible broad overview of software and related disciplines.

Historical programming-language-centered approach to SE (p. xxxvi) - I propose a memory-centered approach in my forthcoming books about Memoretics and Memiotics including a foundational philosophy called Memoidealism where Software is an emergent and predictable artifact.

Architecture of the book (p. xxxix) - concept and example of a book architecture (especially for a foundational book where SE can be templetized to a different discipline)

Broad multidisciplinary foundations of software rather than just computer science (p. xlix)

The author plans to apply metaphors from other disciplines - very much like I started to do with philosophy and physics. I also coined the term metaphorical bijection to describe two-way application of metaphors, for example, from physics to software and from software to physics. 

- Dmitry Vostokov @ SoftwareGeneralist.com -