mordant wit

Undo Software today unveiled UndoDB -- the first bidirectional debugger for compiled programs.

A bidirectional debugger allows programmers to run a program backwards in time as well as forwards. The program can be stepped back line-by-line, or rewound to any point in its history. Furthermore, programmers can play the program forwards and backwards in a totally repeatable fashion, allowing them to "home in" on the cause of a bug.

Bidirectional debuggers are much more powerful than their traditional counterparts, which only allow programmers to step their programs forwards in time. This is particularly true for bugs whose root cause occurs long before the ill effects manifest themselves, and for bugs that occur only intermittently.