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Emacs Is Not Enough

project-mage.org

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Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#161

Post by whartung »

worik wrote: post #145
msla wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's precisely one text terminal or LED scroller away.

> It's precisely one text terminal or LED scroller away. This is quite strange. Let us remember the context > Print debugging is a technique that will never go out of style. It works on any system, So you are suggesting that watching the blinking of a GPIO pin (I hope you have an oscilloscope, or some other probe, rather than applying to to your tongue) is the same as "Print debugging"? I contend that in any sensible…

If you added code to tickle the GPIO specifically to gain insight into the process, whether you leave it in or not, then it’s “print debugging”. Many a microcontroller developer has tickled an indicator LED in their day.

If your simply monitoring activity through an external source (whether it’s an oscilloscope or watching traffic through a network analyzer) then that’s basically black box testing.

Re: Emacs Is Not Enough

#162

Post by whartung »

jb1991 wrote: post #16
taeric wrote: post #11

I can't but reflect back on another post I made today, which is that everything fails at scale. Literally everything. They just fail in different ways and made different tradeoffs along the way. For example, this is why I find myself using "print" debugging on a process of 10^4 values. It is fun to think that, "maybe I can step debug this" on that many values, but... that is well beyond my capability to keep it in my…

Print debugging is a technique that will never go out of style. It works on any system, is used by programmers of any level of experience, is very quick to use and requires no tooling to understand. And sometimes, even if you do have other great tools at your disposal, it’s still the easiest way to track down a problem.

As a general rule I prefer print debugging. I’ll step in with a breakpoint when I have to but odds are I’ve gone through a round of prints first.

I do not enjoy stepping through all of the context setting up the system to fail. I’ve not tried a debugger that can “back up”, that may well be a different experience. But I loathe stepping through code, walking on eggs, overstepping, “oops, thar she blows, start over”. Like Bugs Bunny on the piana.

Rather just toss in some prints, let fly, sift through the wreckage. My builds are fast enough to make the turn around acceptable.

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