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Does Your Debugger Sing to You?

Posted by michael on from the slash-is-a-sweet-sweet-lullaby dept.

ZahrGnosis writes "TRN Mag Online is carrying an article titled Programming tool makes bugs sing. '[The researchers] set up software that mapped pitch and melodic contour information to structural elements in the programming language Pascal. "[We] aimed to see if information about the structure of Pascal programs could be communicated using such musical phrases".' They even found a practical application for software debugging."

3 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. No, but I know a song about a debugger! by Tackhead · · Score: 5, Interesting
    My debugger doesn't sing to me, but I know a guy who sang about a debugger I once used.

    The UPS Debugger Song: "Just One More Hack (and then I'll put it on the 'net)

    Lyrics: Just One More Hack

    Well, I've written a debugger and it suits me just fine
    it'll chase away your problems, turn your water into wine
    it's got so many features, in fact it's bloody clever
    if it can't solve your problem then your problem probably never
    can be solved
    so you might as well pack it on in,
    coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been.

    It's got everything you wanted, everything you desire
    it'll handle fancy structures, set your soul on fire
    it'll indirect through pointers, and catch a falling star
    and if you ask it nicely it'll pop off to the bar
    and tell your friends
    how to solve the problems they're in,
    coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been.

    If you've got a nasty problem and your data structure's bent
    and your pointer's in a tangle with your structure elements
    if you're losing all your memory coz your allocator leaks
    and your girl's getting nasty coz she's not seen you for weeks
    then stoke up Mark's debugger
    you know it'll win,
    coz it's the best debugger that there's ever been....

    - Burt MC Weadon (Mark Wheadon), from MUSENET '92

    (Ah, thank you Google, for the historical reference to first puclication!) UPS - The Song!"

  2. Sound is a great debug tool! by CrazyBrett · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Back when I first started experimenting with full-screen graphics programming, I went through a phase where I could switch screen modes, but not get anything to show up. This meant that I had no way to print diagnostic messages to the screen to figure out when something went wrong. The solution was to play sounds to track the progress of the program and report error conditions.

    "Oh, the program went Boink-Ding and Bloop, but not Clunk... that must mean that palette creation failed!"

  3. Everything old is new again by Viadd · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Back in the Apple II/Commodore/Altair days, programmers (who else was there?) used to tune a radio to a dead band and place it by the computer as a debugging aid. You can tell a lot by listening to the EMI that a computer put out. Infinite loops caused a continuous tone, different stages of processing produced different characteristics in the static, etc.

    There were also programs designed just to place music on the radio with their EMI.