Re: Re: Are debuggers good?

[extremely]

in reply to Re: Are debuggers good?
in thread How to debug unknown dynamic code?

Two Whoops for this. I've never found the debugger to be remotely useful. The pain of using it outweighs the value. I use the debugger to understand behavior of code or algos, I use prints or warn logging to find bugs when I'm too lazy to refactor the code that got out of hand.

About half the time, I just rewrite the section in multiple pieces and the bug "goes away". Heck, I rarely open the debugger on _C_ code unless I need to find out what was on the stack at a core. Perl is ever so much better than that, I just can't imagine that it is very useful.

Update I wouldn't go so far as to say that gdb rocks my world but it has sure made working with big bad C quite a bit easier. Still, I usually don't pick it up will there is a nasty problem.

--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)

[puck]

If I'm writting C or C++, then gdb rocks my world.

Seriously, I took the time a couple of years ago to learn how to use gdb with Emacs and I've never looked back, it has made my life soooo much easier.

Bearing in mind, that this was when I was working on my B.Sc and we did lots of nasty stuff with pointers. However, when I think of how much the people who didn't know gdb struggled with finding bugs, I'm glad I learnt to use it.

I still use gdb on a regular basis. I've been meaning to learn to use the Perl debugger just as well, maybe it's time to try and track down an Emacs mode for it...

To set aside the holy war, I use Emacs for programming and vi for general editing of text files...