

Finding the Four Month Bug: A Debugging Story - ash
http://evanjones.ca/jvm-mmap-pause-finding.html

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bentcorner
Excellent investigation into the "why" of a performance problem. All too often
I can get to the bottom of a "what" of a performance problem, but answering
"why" can be an entirely different ball-game.

Running this all the way to the ground must have felt so satisfying.

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EliRivers
I really like good debugging stories; written well, they're like a very short
mystery story, in which I get to follow the thought process and watch the bug
being cornered and identified, and ultimately it goes in my personal arsenal
of things to think about in the future if I'm ever in a similar situation.

Sadly, this one is ruined by having the answer stuck in the first paragraph
with a great big "TL;DR" in it, so even if I read the whole thing now, I
already know the answer which colours my thinking the whole way through. What
a disappointment.

It's even got the word "story" in the title.

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wooster
I second the recommendation of Debugging by Agans. It was recommended to me by
one of the best debugging people at Apple, and the approaches it outlines have
served me well in the years since.

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agumonkey
Agan's principles listed in 'How to debug hard problems' is a great way of
life in itself.

