Want to Review a Debugging Book?

(Maybe I’ll get lucky and have Robert Scoble pick this up so it really gets wide distribution. 😉

Work’s begun on the third edition of my debugging book.  I might be opening myself up to tons of mail, but I’m looking for a larger group of reviewers than I’ve had in the past.  I’d like to get a broader base of developers to look at the book so I can better appeal to the whole range of developers.  The number one complaint I heard about the previous book was that it was “too hard.”  That meant I didn’t effectively do my job and I want to fix that.

For this edition, I’m splitting the book into two books: one for .NET and one for Win32.  I’ll be doing the .NET version first and the title is changing to “Debugging, Testing, and Tuning .NET Applications” to reflect the new tools in VS.NET 2005.  Before I get tons of flame mail and comments from you Win32 folks, we will be working on the Win32 version as soon as I get the .NET one done.  There’s only one of me and only so much time in the day.  I know I shouldn’t use sleep as a crutch, but waking up with my forehead on the keyboard gets old after a while. J

From the new title, you can see that I’ll be adding coverage for the new testing and performance tools in VS.NET 2005.  I’ve wanted to write more about those areas of debugging for a while.  To address the “too hard” problem, I’m adding a huge section that covers all sorts of common and not so common scenarios people run into and how to get started fixing them.  For example, if you’re seeing an OutOfMemoryException in a .NET application, I’ll discuss the steps you can take to start narrowing down the problem.  As part of the suggestions for tackling the problem I’ll point to parts of the book that go into deeper discussions, other books, web sites, blog entries, etc.  My hope is that by giving folks a starting point they’ll be able to take advantage of more the book and solve problems faster.  

If you have any suggestions or tricks I would LOVE to hear about them.  They can be big or as small as “Problem: My web service is timing out when debugging.”  “Hints: Set the IIS HTTP timeout value to higher than the web service timeout as that take precedence.  (followed by the steps on setting the IIS timeout value).”  If you also have “War Stories” to share, I’m looking for more of them as well.

For those of you that loved the utilities, example code and hard core stuff, I certainly won’t be getting rid of that!  I have ideas for all sorts of diagnostic tools, more Visual Studio .NET Add-Ins, and even deeper digging for this edition.  If you’ve wanted a tool or know how something worked, shoot me a mail, as it’s early enough in the cycle for me to possibly add it.

What I’m interested from the Review Crew are good reviews of the chapters for mistakes, clarity, and missing ideas.  Additionally, testing of the code would be extremely helpful (I want zero bugs in the code for this edition!).  From you I’m looking for the following:

1. Good reviews on the chapters

2. Provide good tricks

3. Find good bugs in the source code. 

What’s in it for you?  Well, you’ll get to read the book and see the code before anyone else.  You’re prize package will also include:

1. A HUGE thank you in the acknowledgements

2. A free dinner at a great restaurant next time I’m in your area (or you’re in mine)

3. My total, eternal gratitude (if that counts for anything!)

4. An autographed copy of the book

If you’re interested, send me an email (I’m ‘john’ care of this company) with a short blurb about the type of .NET development you’re doing.  Additionally, please include how much overall development as well as .NET experience you have.  I want to ensure I get a broad range of folks from newer .NET developers, to super seasoned pros, to managers (yes, even managers!).  Please understand that I don’t have the bandwidth to handle everyone who wants to be a reviewer, so please don’t be disappointed if you aren’t selected.

When Jeff Prosise wrote his last book, he kept a book blog about what he was doing and it proved extremely popular.  I’ll be doing the same here in Wintellog so if you’ve wanted to see what a different author is thinking as they struggle through a book, keep your readers pointed here.