Subj : Re: Not debugging?
To   : comp.programming,comp.lang.java.programmer,comp.lang.lisp
From : Patricia Shanahan
Date : Thu Aug 25 2005 12:13 am

CBFalconer wrote:
> Hartmann Schaffer wrote:
> 
>>Tim X wrote:
>>
>>>...
>>>I'm guessing he was referring to the irritating development of
>>>programmers who are not able to debug code without a high level
>>>IDE which includes a debugger which allows them to step/trace
>>>through the code one line at a time and watch what happens to
>>>variables in a watch window.
>>>
>>>IMO this is a really bad trend because it means programmers
>>>stop thinking about their code and how it actually works. this
>>>sort of 'debugging' tends to be extremely slow - especially for
>>>trivial type bugs which would noramlly be spotted very quickly
>>>by someone wh understands what their code is doing and how it
>>>works.
>>
>>working with an IDE debugger beats analysing a binary (i.e. hex
>>or octal) core dump
> 
> 
> I can't really remember when I last used a debugger.  Judicious
> printf statements, or the equivalent, have handled everything for
> me for years.
> 

The key issue for me is the round trip time to make a change in the
debug output, recompile, and run to the point of failure. If that takes
a few minutes, I have no problem using printouts.

On the other hand, I have been faced with problems in unfamiliar
programs that took several hours from starting the run to first symptoms
of the problem. Once I was at a failure point, I wanted to squeeze every
scrap of data I could.

An interactive debugger allows you to ask questions you didn't know you
wanted to ask until you saw the answer to another question. For example,
you can see which variable is incorrect at the failure point, look at
the source code to find the variables that affect it, and immediately
probe their values.

Patricia

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