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Debugging in Plain English?
sameerdesai writes "CNN is carrying a story about Researchers from Carnegie Melon: Myers and a graduate student, Andrew Ko, have developed a debugging program that lets users ask questions about computer errors in plain English: Why didn't a program behave as expected? I guess with recent exploits and bugs that were found this will soon be a hot research topic or tool in the market." We recently did a story about revolutionary debugging techniques; the researchers' website has some papers and other information.
"Because you can't code worth a damn."
Mr. Debugger, I'm running a multithreaded perl app using perl 5.8.3's ithreads. I am using DBD::mysql to talk to a local mysql database. At the program start I spawn a child thread that waits for a thread::queue to be filled with data. Once the child thread receives data it spawns several children of its own to process the data. Each grandchild forms its own dbd connection and successfully processes the data, then gracefully closes the connection and waits to be joined.
The problem arises when the controlling child thread begins to join the grandchildren. Despite the mention of global destruction, the entire program is not exiting - just the grandchildren are being joined. When the grandchildren join, perl dies with the following error:
Attempt to dereference null pointer during global destruction.
When performing the same style operation without using DBD (and thus not actually doing anything useful) the error does not occur. Initially, this appears to be a thread-safety issue with DBD however when isolating the child and grandchildren in their own test program (so the controlling child is the main program and the grandchildren are spawned worker children) the error does not appear.
Help me O great plain English debugger. You are my only hope!
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
printf, System.out.println, warn, print, etc.
Oh ... this will be wonderful for security the world over. If it works ...
Microsoft Programmer: "Why does our software suck?"
*computer hangs, then bursts into flames from the load*
In soviet russia, You ask not what country do for you, but what you do for country!
Oh wait...
Because I debug in plain english anyway, I'm always saying "Why the hell won't you work you piece of shit?!" and "Listen here you piece of shit if you insist on seg faulting again then I'll show you where you can put those damn indices!"...
So... now the computer can actually respond to my threats and questions. Excellent!
Mike.
(Yes, I did RTFA.)
Mmmm......sacrelicious.
Untill I can have a full conversation with a computer (a la the Turing effect, not the limited versions that Alice et. al. can accomplish) I'll be happy with source code, thank you very much. It's just another layer blocking me from the code anyway (read In the Beginning... lately?).
"Whyline, has been used only to debug programs in Alice, an academic programming language with a limited vocabulary of commands to make interactive 3-D worlds, like video games."
"Adding Whyline to a different language, like Java, which is 10 times as complex, could limit how much Whyline can help. So Whyline is a very long way from getting incorporated into the world's most widespread software, Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating system. (When asked about its own debugging efforts, Microsoft didn't comment.)"
Which means at the moment its all speculation, and only works for very simple (hello world) applications. By the time this program is useful, we'll have robots (like Millenium man), who will do all the debugging...
Hello SeanTobin(138474)!
I am Surest K. Padebugtel of Mrdebugger.com
I understand that you are having a problem with I'm running a multithreaded perl app using perl 5.8.3's ithreads. I am using DBD::mysql to talk to a local mysql database. At the program start I spawn a child thread that waits for a thread::queue to be filled with data. Once the child thread receives data it spawns several children of its own to process the data. Each grandchild forms its own dbd connection and successfully processes the data, then gracefully closes the connection and waits to be joined.
Please to reboot your system.
Has this helped your problem? (Click "Reply" to this trouble ticket if you feel you need further assistance with I'm running a multithreaded perl app using perl 5.8.3's ithreads. I am using DBD::mysql to talk to a local mysql database. At the program start I spawn a child thread that waits for a thread::queue to be filled with data. Once the child thread receives data it spawns several children of its own to process the data. Each grandchild forms its own dbd connection and successfully processes the data, then gracefully closes the connection and waits to be joined.)
Thank you for your interest in Mrdebugger.com!
Sincerely,
Suresh K. Padebugtel