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0 pointsuwuemu3y ago0 comments

You can't possibly call yourself a "professional developer" (and it sounds like you're not pointing out that you're paid for the work, but that you're a "pro") and then talk about debugging as something you rarely do. If debugging (with a debugger) is something you rarely do, you may be paid for your work, but I wouldn't call you a pro.

You should be debugging alongside development to gain deep understanding and reduce errors. No amount of "test" coverage can replace that.

I'm always skeptical about people who don't use IDEs and I'm almost always right about them. And it's not the good kind of being right.

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7 comments · 4 top-level

matthewmacleod3y ago· 3 in thread

That’s funny, because I’m always skeptical about people who fire in all judgy about the way other people work when they know literally nothing about who they are or what they do, and I am always right.

selfhoster113y ago

I think that parent’s point was that debugging is an exceedingly powerful tool, and therefore leaving it out of your toolset by definition makes you less powerful as a programmer. It’s not even such an esoteric skill - operating the simplest kind of a GUI debugger is maybe learning 5-6 different actions, and the IDE often takes care of the details of setting up the debugger for you.

jdbernard3y ago

I don't know that I'm convinced of that point though. I've been developing software professionally for almost 20 years and my usage and reliance on a debugger has decreased over time. At the moment, I think it's been probably three months since I've last used one.

1 more reply

wruza3y ago

On the contrary, I find a common debugger (see questions below) an underwhelming experience, not a powerful tool.

Can it:

- assign (scenario, subsystem, level, description) to breakpoints and watches, so they can be turned on/off or selected in groups for debugging without removal?

- commit these scenarios of bps and watches into a repository?

- edit/read them in a textual form to patch or share over an IM?

- store traces of previous sessions and diff them to find out what changed?

Does anything even remotely similar exist? Most debuggers are just test-pause-and-inspect tools with “integration” in the form of eval on mouse hover. Their ux and dx sucks and the only reason I could find to use them were slow build times and too low-level runtimes, which are no more today.

Pretty sure most people avoid debuggers not because they are too hard to learn (they aren’t), but because they are too dumb to be useful, given that you can ‘if (cond) log.level(…)’ and restart instantly.

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selfhoster113y ago

That’s a fine opinion to hold, until you work on applications that you cannot debug for one reason or another.

As a fellow debugger lover, having to basically use log statements instead of being able to reach in and debug was a rude awakening. Some people probably don’t know that debugging can be easy with the right combination of IDE and language. Or the billion software layers mean that the debugger fails to attach for some reason which can’t be figured out.

wruza3y ago

I have a decent experience in all sorts of debuggers (from softice to gdb to ide) and prefer log() where possible. The reasons are: less-ing a log is superior to stepping into. Step-based debugging doesn’t work in production or retrospectively. That’s it.

jen203y ago

This kind of post is unhelpful and unnecessary.

Debugging and using IDEs are entirely orthogonal. DTrace and lldb are far more valuable to me than a graphical step debugger, which I effectively never use. As it happens I use JetBrains IDEs full time.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

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7 comments · 4 top-level

matthewmacleod3y ago· 3 in thread

selfhoster113y ago

jdbernard3y ago

1 more reply

wruza3y ago

On the contrary, I find a common debugger (see questions below) an underwhelming experience, not a powerful tool.

Can it:

- assign (scenario, subsystem, level, description) to breakpoints and watches, so they can be turned on/off or selected in groups for debugging without removal?

- commit these scenarios of bps and watches into a repository?

- edit/read them in a textual form to patch or share over an IM?

- store traces of previous sessions and diff them to find out what changed?

1 more reply

selfhoster113y ago

That’s a fine opinion to hold, until you work on applications that you cannot debug for one reason or another.

wruza3y ago

jen203y ago

This kind of post is unhelpful and unnecessary.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse