Finding Bugs Is Easy

daveho writes "My advisor and I are working on a tool to automatically find bugs in Java programs. One of the interesting results of our work is that we've found hundreds of real bugs in production code using extremely simple techniques. We believe that automated tools, if used more widely, could prevent a lot of bugs from making it in to production systems."

Bugs in Java code? Inconceivable!

[wowbagger]

Bugs in Java code? Inconceivable!

I thought it was impossible to write bugs in Java - nature's most perfect language! After all, all the Java bigo^H^H^H^Hzealot^H^H^H^H^H^Hexperts have always said that all software problems would vanish if we would just use their perfect language.

(/me removes tongue from cheek)

I just hope that the myriad and varied Java bigots out there will take this to heed: No language can prevent you from making mistakes.

(NOTE: I most emphatically do NOT assert that a language cannot make certain classes of errors more difficult to make!)

(NOTE 2: I also do not assert that all people who use Java, or promote the use of Java are bigots.)

There is no substitute for experience, careful design, and methodical testing.

The obvious solution...

[Lendrick]

Please note that FindBugs is alpha-quality software. You may find bugs in it, and the features and source code may change significantly in future releases.

...is to run it on itself.

FindBugs?

[Copperhead]

What kind of name is "FindBugs"? What self-respecting Open Source project would ever name itself after what it actually does? That's so wrong!

They need to pick a name like "||gazm", "JizMop", or "Mozilla" like all the other cool OS projects. I'm sure they'll learn their lesson soon.

Re:FindBugs?

[pmz]

"||gazm"

What a perfect name for a logic-based language or boolean calculator!

Re:FindBugs?

[Ratbert42]

Go with the crowd and just name it Firebird.

Suggestions to daveho

[jtheory]

I know it's expanding quickly, but the main thing the FindBugs homepage is missing is a list of the errors that FindBugs identifies.

I got a few hints from the screenshots and changelist... but I need more!

* infrastructure for doing dataflow analysis
* tracking of locks for inconsistent synchronization detector
* a few general cleanup fixes in the screenshot

The first 2 especially sound interesting... but not quite enough for me to download a 0.5 version release and slog through the source code.