Firmware update capability has become a must-have for most devices. Whether to add new features after launch, fix bugs, or urgently patch a security hole, firmware updates gives modern teams the flexibility they need to move fast and react to a changing environment. I’ve written at length about firmware updates in the past, including on Interrupt with a Firmware Update Cookbook and a post about code signing, and even recorded a webinar on the topic.

In the old days, the most senior members of an engineering team were the best debuggers. They had built up such an extensive knowledge about their systems that they instinctively knew the right questions to ask and the right places to look. They even wrote detailed runbooks in an attempt to identify and solve every possible issue and possible permutation of an issue.

Write enough programs, and you’ll agree that it’s impossible to write an exception-free program, at least in the first go. Java debugging is a major part of the coding process, and knowing how to debug your code efficiently can make or break your day. And in Java applications, understanding and leveraging stack traces can be the game-changer you need to ship your application quickly. This article will cover how to debug in Java and how Java stack traces simplify it.

Parsing bugs are the gift that keeps giving in the age of APIs. We use a service; it works perfectly in debugging, QA, etc. Then some user input that made its way to the web request, returns a result we just can’t parse. Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can do at this stage. We need to understand why the failure occurred and how we can workaround it and fix it.