From: Eric Wong <normalperson@...>
Date: 2010-06-10T03:35:26+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] strace_me 1.0 Released

Eric Hodel <drbrain@segment7.net> wrote:
> http://seattlerb.rubyforge.org/strace_me
> 
> A wrapper around strace(1) that allows you to perform targetted tracing of a
> block.  strace_me allows you to track down problems without wading through
> gobs of ruby startup or other irrelevant noise.

Other than debugging, this could be a great tool for people to learn
Unix systems programming with.

My learning process has always been somewhat odd, but it is usually some
variant of:

  1. strace programs I find interesting
  2. read manpages for syscalls I don't recognize in strace output
  3. read source code for whatever I straced

Over time I do 2) less and less since the list of syscalls is
fairly small.

Maybe this technique for learning will work for someone else, too.

-- 
Eric Wong