Why I use a debugger
blog.pnkfx.org
Why I use a debugger
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Re: Why I use a debugger
#2I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
Re: Why I use a debugger
#3I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
You'd think. But I still see discussions in JavaScript and PHP related threads where people swear by adding `console.log`/`var_dump` statements to their code over using the debugger.
I've seen quite a few threads on r/php where individuals introduce a newer, supposedly better, library that can be used instead of `var_dump`, and there's always the inevitable "why not use the debugger?" to which many reply "because it's hard to set up" or "var_dump is better" or something silly to that effect.
Re: Why I use a debugger
#4I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
You probably were not born last time I fired a debugger.
Those who can't code, debug. :-)
Joke apart it's a style thing, tracing and thinking gets you a long way, though virtuoso debugger users can be productive too no doubt. It's a bit like GUI vs CLI.
Re: Why I use a debugger
#5I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
You probably were not born last time I fired a debugger. Those who can't code, debug. :-) Joke apart it's a style thing, tracing and thinking gets you a long way, though virtuoso debugger users can be productive too no doubt. It's a bit like GUI vs CLI.
In principle, yes, thinking is strictly better than simulating, and over-relying on a debugger can get you into the habit of not reasoning about your code.
In practice, most software is a stack of abstractions and bugs can be caused by anything at any level of that pile, including libraries. The ability to quickly inspect the state at a given execution step is not a tool that can realistically be dispensed by just thinking hard about the code.
Re: Why I use a debugger
#6I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
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Re: Why I use a debugger
#7On one of Gordon Ramsey's shows he had a chef who purported to be one of the best in the world. While cooking his scallops kept sticking to the pan, this makes them look bad and Gordon won't serve them looking like that. Gordon yelled something like "Why aren't you using the non-stick pans, it's right there in the name, non-stick". I hear his voice in my head at least once a month when one of the people I work with spends a week on a bug and never once whips out a debugger. It's right there in the name guys.
Re: Why I use a debugger
#8I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
You'd think. But I still see discussions in JavaScript and PHP related threads where people swear by adding `console.log`/`var_dump` statements to their code over using the debugger. I've seen quite a few threads on r/php where individuals introduce a newer, supposedly better, library that can be used instead of `var_dump`, and there's always the inevitable "why not use the debugger?" to which many reply "because it'…
Which is strange, because debugging in JS and PHP is almost trivial to setup. Perhaps less so in PHP, but for JS it's right there in the browser for client side code.
Re: Why I use a debugger
#9I thought using debuggers was standard practice in non trivial programs?
You probably were not born last time I fired a debugger. Those who can't code, debug. :-) Joke apart it's a style thing, tracing and thinking gets you a long way, though virtuoso debugger users can be productive too no doubt. It's a bit like GUI vs CLI.
I wrote without a debugger for most of the start of my career, but problem solving is about having the right information on hand, and for me a debugger lets me gather that information quicker, and it also lets me iterate faster.
There's another great benefit to a debugger, and that is troubleshooting long-running code or hard to prime iterations. Like for example, debugging a checkout flow can be very cumbersome as you have to prime the state for every test. There are plenty of workarounds if you have to log your way through it, but wouldn't it just be easier to use a tool designed for the job?
Re: Why I use a debugger
#10There are cases where I use print debugging in Firefox because it's ironically often faster to rebuild and rerun than for gdb to load the debug info. Also for rust, it can be much more convenient to use the dbg! macro for pretty printing rather than dig in the mess of values in the debugger.