May 2007 Meeting

Topic:

The Zero Debugger

Speaker:

Cristian Vlasceanu

When:

Wednesday, May 23, 2007
Presentation @ 7:00pm

Where:

Microsoft Corporation
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, Washington 98052
Building 41 (Building 41 is at the corner of NE 31st and 156th Ave NE)
[ Map | Microsoft Campus Map ]

Description:

In this presentation, I will:

1) overview the debugging support provided at the OS level on Linux, how limitations in the design impacts debugger architecture

2) share with the group my experience in implementing a C++ debugger on Linux

3) underline the power of adding a scripting language to a debugger, and shine the light on the Boost.Python library

4) Extending debugger support to other languages, namely Walter Bright's D.

I found that debugger architecture lends itself well to the paradigms of C++. I may give some examples, however there is not enough time to outline the complete architecture at the C++ source level of detail.

And last but not least... DISCLAIMER: I am not interested in talking about the political aspects of Linux / OpenSource / GPL in this setting. I intend to keep the discussion rather technical.

About the Speaker:

The Zero debugger was created by Cristian Vlasceanu.  He works on custom interpreters and language translators in his daytime job, and hacks Zero at night.

Cristian is a lifelong friend of Andrei Alexandrescu and has programmed in  C++ for over a decade. He suggested the name Loki for the C++ library described in the ground breaking book Modern C++ Design.

After spending a couple of years in Atlanta, Cristian has moved to Seattle and has lived in the Pacific Northwest since 2000.

Cristian has written a couple of technical articles for the now defunct C/C++ Users Journal, blogs infrequently, and is a veteran of Amazon.com and RealNetworks.