In the last few sections we’ve been discussing tools and techniques for debugging parallel and serial code. Now, when a biologist thinks about bugs, he classifies them into genus and species.

And each category has its own characteristics: what colour does it have, how many legs does it have, does it fly? Those properties help a biologist identify a bug. I know, this is really, really 19th century but bare with me. Because we want to do a similar thing for software defects. So, if you have a taxonomy of bugs, that information will actually help you to identify bugs more easily. And for each type of bug we’ll discuss strategies and techniques to pinpoint those bugs using the tools we’ve been discussing. Finally, since practice makes perfect, we’ll also give you some cases to work on for yourself that are a bit more sophisticated than the exercises we’ve been dealing with up to now.

I wish you good hunting.