It's not just slow: if you're running anything doing a control application (like running a radio), if you hit a breakpoint the whole system crashes to a halt wh

It's not just slow: if you're running anything doing a control application (like running a radio), if you hit a breakpoint the whole system crashes to a halt when you hit a breakpoint (because you're no longer servicing whatever you mean to service). This makes the subsequent stepping meaningless. In this environment, a stream of debug output (printfs in the basic case) is unmatchable. Also, as you build them up throughout your project they become a great diagnostic tool allowing you to trace program behaviour and diagnose bugs just by looking at the output.