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Understanding Software

Understanding Software

By : Max Kanat-Alexander
3.8 (11)
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Understanding Software

Understanding Software

3.8 (11)
By: Max Kanat-Alexander

Overview of this book

In Understanding Software, Max Kanat-Alexander, Technical Lead for Code Health at Google, shows you how to bring simplicity back to computer programming. Max explains to you why programmers suck, and how to suck less as a programmer. There’s just too much complex stuff in the world. Complex stuff can’t be used, and it breaks too easily. Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart. Understanding Software covers many areas of programming, from how to write simple code to profound insights into programming, and then how to suck less at what you do! You'll discover the problems with software complexity, the root of its causes, and how to use simplicity to create great software. You'll examine debugging like you've never done before, and how to get a handle on being happy while working in teams. Max brings a selection of carefully crafted essays, thoughts, and advice about working and succeeding in the software industry, from his legendary blog Code Simplicity. Max has crafted forty-three essays which have the power to help you avoid complexity and embrace simplicity, so you can be a happier and more successful developer. Max's technical knowledge, insight, and kindness, has earned him code guru status, and his ideas will inspire you and help refresh your approach to the challenges of being a developer.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
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Free Chapter
1
Table of Contents
2
Understanding Software
3
Credits
4
About the Author
6
Customer Feedback
7
Foreword
15
Index

Chapter 15. The Source of Bugs

Where do bugs come from? Could we narrow down the cause of all bugs to just one source or a few? As it turns out, we can.

Bugs most commonly come from somebody's failure to reduce complexity. Less commonly, they come from a misunderstanding of something that was actually simple.

Other than typos, I'm pretty sure that those two things are the source of all bugs, though I haven't yet done extensive research to prove it.

When something is complex, it's far too easy to misuse it. If there's a black box with millions of unlabeled buttons on it, and 16 of them blow up the world, somebody's going to blow up the world. Similarly, in programming, if you can't easily understand the documentation of a language, or the actual language itself, you're going to misuse it somehow.

There's no right way to use a box with millions of unlabeled buttons, really. You could never figure it out, and even if you wanted to read the...

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