Rating: 
Summary: Barely satisfactory
Review: For context, I am a Sr. Engineer with 4 year's experience in Window's app development, mostly (80%)in MFC and 20% in SDK.I found that this book wanders somewhat aimlessly around the debugging landscape, taking detours that are substantially outside the scope of the book as indicated by the title. In a 431 page book, 60 pages are devoted to "how do debuggers work", replete with substantial code examples. Another 50 pages are an introduction to assembly language debugging. Neither topic is germane to debugging applications software except in the rarest of circumstances. I suspect we were told about these subjects because the author knows about them, not because they are particularly useful. By including this material, the author seems to suggest that you have to know how to build a debugger in order to use it. Substantial portions of what is left over are also tangential to applications debugging - Crash Handling, Multithreaded deadlock debugging. automated debugging are useful topics, but are outside the areas where most of my bugs occur. Only one chapter (Power Debugging with the Visual C++ Debugger) addressed my day-to-day debugging concerns directly. I wish much more time were spent on this area.
Rating: 
Summary: It's about time!
Review: I guess the title says it all. I've been waiting for a book to that demystifies the debugging process, and this is the one that does. With this book, John Robbins' teaches you a part of software development that is key to career success and he does it with a writing style that makes the subject matter easy to digest. I've always enjoyed John's MSJ BugSlayer columns, and now he's once again taken his vast development background and shared it with his readers. He shows you how debuggers work and then goes on show you how to effectively use them in your day-to-day work. If you are a serious Windows developer, you should read this book. Great job, John!
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Choice Among Windows Debugging Books
Review: I have four debugging books on the shelf above my monitor. This is the one I refer to most. I have over 30 years programming experience, about ten in C and C++, and I find that this book is an excellent resource. I still haven't read it cover to cover, and the CD is still sealed - much of it is on MSDN in some form anyway - so some of the other review complaints may have merit. Notwithstanding all of those, this is an excellent book, and you will probably get a good return on your investment in time and money. For the record, the other three books are:
- Windows 2000 Kernel Debugging - may be more useful for device driver debugging
- Debugging Windows Programs - not bad, perhaps a little less intense than this book
- Debugging C++ - This is probably a little light for me, but I have a lot of background in debugging from other platforms. If you find the John Robbins book too challenging, this may be a good start And this last brings up the only possible shortcoming of this book. I think the reader needs a certain level of knowledge, experience, and commitment to being a professional Windows programmer to get the most value from it. If you have these qualities, this book is invaluable. If not, you may find it very useful as you get more experience. Excellent choice in any event.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Choice Among Windows Debugging Books
Review: I have four debugging books on the shelf above my monitor. This is the one I refer to most. I have over 30 years programming experience, about ten in C and C++, and I find that this book is an excellent resource. I still haven't read it cover to cover, and the CD is still sealed - much of it is on MSDN in some form anyway - so some of the other review complaints may have merit. Notwithstanding all of those, this is an excellent book, and you will probably get a good return on your investment in time and money. For the record, the other three books are:
- Windows 2000 Kernel Debugging - may be more useful for device driver debugging
- Debugging Windows Programs - not bad, perhaps a little less intense than this book
- Debugging C++ - This is probably a little light for me, but I have a lot of background in debugging from other platforms. If you find the John Robbins book too challenging, this may be a good start And this last brings up the only possible shortcoming of this book. I think the reader needs a certain level of knowledge, experience, and commitment to being a professional Windows programmer to get the most value from it. If you have these qualities, this book is invaluable. If not, you may find it very useful as you get more experience. Excellent choice in any event.
Rating:
Summary: Tour de Force
Review: I will be quite surprised if any reviewers give this book less than five stars. Mr. Robbins belongs on any serious Win32 programmer's shelf, nestled alongside Richter and Rector/Newcomer. Good work John!
Rating:
Summary: This book is excellent!
Review: I'm a conference speaker and author myself (and no, I don't know John personally ;-)). I recently read this book while on train to/from a developer conference and there's just one word: excellent! If you need to understand how debuggers work and how to work through x86 assembly during debugging this book is for you! Even though I'm not a C/C++ programmer but instead concentrate on the .NET Framework using C#, I guess this book is one of the best I ever read - and .NET definitely doesn't make it obsolete in any way. And it's not only the information provided in this book but also the author's writing style which make it exceptional fun to read. Thanks for a great book!
Rating:
Summary: John Robbins is a GOD among programmers...
Review: I've been programming for 16 years with 10 of those years under the Windows environment. This is, by far, the best book on debugging that I've ever had the pleasure of reading. Granted, debugging is a nebulus topic, but Mr. Robbins does a fantastic job of capturing the meat of Windows debugging. If you've ever spent endless long hours trying to debug an application, then this book is for you!
Rating:
Summary: This book is excellent!
Review: John Robbins book is clearly written and easy to follow. He has valuable insights and provides wonderful examples and utilities. His BugSlayerUtil has been extremely useful in tracking down bugs within my software. Such a useful tool should not go unheralded. John has taken some hits becasue he was not able to include several .lib and dll files on his CD. This is not his fault but rather Microsofts licensing agreement. He goes out of his way to explain this and point you in the right directions to obtain the files. This book is a must have among serious developers. ETH
Rating: 
Summary: Debugging Applications is a Must Have!
Review: John Robbins book is clearly written and easy to follow. He has valuable insights and provides wonderful examples and utilities. His BugSlayerUtil has been extremely useful in tracking down bugs within my software. Such a useful tool should not go unheralded. John has taken some hits becasue he was not able to include several .lib and dll files on his CD. This is not his fault but rather Microsofts licensing agreement. He goes out of his way to explain this and point you in the right directions to obtain the files. This book is a must have among serious developers. ETH
Rating:
Summary: Do you aspire to be a serious developer? If so, read this bk
Review: John Robbins did a great job on this book. I was very impressed both on the depth and breadth of the issues treated. At first, I though on skipping the chapter on Visual Basic debugging, since I am strictly a VC++ developer, but I am glad I did not. Even that chapter gave me insights that I can use on my day to day, for example, when he runs the VB compiler while in the debugger and is able to see how VB uses the C compiler's code generation (second pass). Some great insights and lots of good example on how to resolve problems and how to use all the capabilities of the debugger to ones best advantage. It will teach you what to do when the debugger gets you to a source line that before that line, everything is working properly, after that line the world has turned upside down. It will teach you enough X86 assembly to make you dangerous and be able to read between the (source) lines in the process. Even if you thought you knew it already. Could it be improved ? Yes, can't it always ? Coverage on tracking memory leaks could be expanded, for example, to cover MFC's shortcomings when reporting them, but this book is a close to perfection as I have seen them. And it is a great read too. His style is easy to follow, even though some of the subjects are deep and complex, but John transfers the knowledge so easily, it is amazing. Once I completed my first read, I really felt like I had just finished listening to a very good rendition of a Beethoven or Mozart simphony. Every developer that aspire to be a serious developer should read it and reread it. And thank you, John Robbins. I will be buying every book you write.
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