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Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

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Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

#16
post #3
post #2

Debuggers are particularly tricky to write so this is quite good!

Thanks, it's been quite a struggle at times : D

Yeah, I started working on a pre-existing debugger around the same age as you (this was the ITS debugger DDT, so 40+ years ago) and boy, it was full of puzzling counterintuitive stuff.

And it was just an assembly debugger so minimal debugging symbols. Merely reading some DWARF data is impressive enough. DWARF makes sense to me but that’s only because I worked with other debugging formats and compiler output of same, before and during the evolution of DWARF. I can imagine it’s hard to understand when you start cold with DWARF 5.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

#17

Very well done, and I hope you build this out further, but please leave out the 'as a 17 yo'. I really don't think it's relevant and risks coming across as cloying - your work should (and does) stand on it's own.

As a (former) employer I definitely think his age is relevant.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

#18

Very well done, and I hope you build this out further, but please leave out the 'as a 17 yo'. I really don't think it's relevant and risks coming across as cloying - your work should (and does) stand on it's own.

It is an achievement that requires courage, specialization and training... the latter require time and focus.

This guy did it at an early age, showing great promise for the years to come.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

#19
post #16
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, it's been quite a struggle at times : D

Yeah, I started working on a pre-existing debugger around the same age as you (this was the ITS debugger DDT, so 40+ years ago) and boy, it was full of puzzling counterintuitive stuff. And it was just an assembly debugger so minimal debugging symbols. Merely reading some DWARF data is impressive enough. DWARF makes sense to me but that’s only because I worked with other debugging formats and compiler output of same,…

DWARF 5 is truly ... special. My mind was blown when I understood that half of its data is encoded as instructions for full-blown stack-based VM.

Re: Show HN: I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

#20
post #17

Very well done, and I hope you build this out further, but please leave out the 'as a 17 yo'. I really don't think it's relevant and risks coming across as cloying - your work should (and does) stand on it's own.

As a (former) employer I definitely think his age is relevant.

It's maybe relevant on a CV, not so on HN, which is for 'look at this', not 'look at me'.
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