Time Travel Debugging Java Applications
Channel: Java User Group Switzerland
Date: 2021-04-04

Speaker: Greg Law
Recorded: 2021-03-24

00:00:00 Intro
00:03:10 The Talk
01:06:20 Q&A

Time-travel debugging gives you programming superpowers. Capture a machine-level recording of the execution of a process, load the recording into your IDE to replay and rewind the tape, stepping or running backwards and forwards. Go to any line of code that executed, and see any piece of program state. The most difficult bugs - including race conditions, logic errors, and intermittent exceptions - can be tracked back to their root cause with ease. Perfect for fixing intermittent/non-repeatable test failures in CI ("flaky tests") or hard-to-reproduce failures in production, or collaborating with colleagues remotely and asynchronously. Fix in minutes what would have taken hours, or in hours what would have taken weeks or months.

This talk will cover the new breed of time-travel debuggers. Some are open source, some from the tech giants like Microsoft and some from startups. Having spent decades as a niche research topic, time travel debuggers now have the performance and completeness to be used on real-world, complex tech stacks with millions of lines of code.

Greg has spent 20+ years working on operating systems and development tools, in engineering and leadership roles at a variety of start-ups. He co-founded Undo.io - a venture backed start-up making time travel debugging a reality. He's still happiest when he's typing code into vim.

Twitter: @gregthelaw

Organized by: Java User Group Switzerland
https://www.jug.ch/