On Debugging  

David A. Wheeler writes:

Since the whole book revolves around the nine rules, it might help to understand the book by skimming the rules and their sub-rules:

  1. Understand the system
  2. Make it fail
  3. Quit thinking and look
  4. Divide and conquer
  5. Change one thing at a time
  6. Keep an audit trail
  7. Check the plug
  8. Get a fresh view
  9. If you didn’t fix it, it ain’t fixed

‘Quit thinking and look’, ‘Check the plug’, and ‘If you didn’t fix it, it ain’t fixed’ are true, and absolute zingers!