It is my opinion that the difference between good developers and outstanding ones are the way that they debug applications. As such, I wanted to point you to some great debugging resources to get you well on your way to standing with the outstanding developers.
First off, there is the issue of understanding Windows to begin with that get a lot of people in trouble. Many issues can be traced down to something that is “working as designed”. As such, I highly recommend the Microsoft Windows Internals book from MS Press. This book will give you a great understanding of how Windows works. Next, I would brush up on .NET debugging skills. To do so, I recommend a .NET 2003 book, but most of the debugging skills still apply to 2005, so don’t be dismayed by the title: Debugging Applications for Microsoft .NET and Windows. Once again, John Robbins from Wintellect writes one awesome book.
Well, books are great, but what about free resources? I have some of those too!
First, you can check out the windows debugging website at:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/devtools/debugging/default.mspx
Then there are a new series of webcasts that have just been released in the past week or so dealing with the very issue of debugging:
TechNet Webcast: Microsoft.com Operations Introduces Real World Debugging: Debugging CLR Internals
OK. So maybe I did not have a TON of debugging resources, but this is a great start for anyone who wants to make himself or herself into an outstanding SDE or SDET. So go work yourself into a “debugging guru”. By the time you are done, hopefully John Robbins’ new book on debugging will be out.
