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This is perhaps one of the most harmful statements I’ve ever read on Hacker News. You’re not doing it wrong if you use a tool to help you understand what your p

This is perhaps one of the most harmful statements I’ve ever read on Hacker News. You’re not doing it wrong if you use a tool to help you understand what your program is doing. Should you follow good design patterns, like using small functions when writing your software? Yes. Should you minimize complex state? Sure. Should you use tools to help you understand what your program is doing? Absolutely. The two are not mutually exclusive. There are a LOT of different ways to write software. Some more stateful than others. Some lower level than others. Some more asyncrounous than others. Some more functional. Some more object oriented. Your experience with the software you write in your day to day, is not the same stack and may not even be in the same universe as what others are attempting. Writing a React app is very different from writing a game in Unity, which is very different than writing a game engine in C++ which is very different that writing large scale services that talk to clusters of computers and hardware devices, which is different than writing some low level library in Rust or Haskell or doing data science in R or Octave. Please fucking stop with this “one right way”, “you’re dodging it wrong” dogmatic bullshit. Your limited worldview does not apply to ALL of software development. Use a fucking REPL if you want. Use a debugger if you want. Use logs and traces if you want. Just try to write good software, try to understand your code, and ignore dogmatic and valiantly bad advice and opinions like the parent comment on Hacker News.

hannofcart 8y ago
> This is perhaps one of the most harmful statements I’ve ever read on Hacker News. And here I thought I was writing an innocuous comment on debugging code. Hyperbole much? > There are a LOT of different ways to write software... Writing a React app is very different from writing a game in Unity, which is very different than writing a game engine in C++. It's interesting that you brought up these 3 use cases. I started my career working for a shop that wrote a game engine in C++, then moved to Unity. I now write React apps for a living. Do I know you? :) With the exception of a few corner cases, like portions of code that does rendering, and HFT software, where performance concerns trump everything else, what I have seen in that time is the following: 1) decomposing your code into smaller functions is objectively better than NOT doing so. 2) writing functions that don't mutate its local variables is objectively better than writing functions that DO. By "objectively better", I mean that the code written conforming to the above have the following characteristics: - more readable than code that does not. - more testable than code that does not. - more re-usable than code that does not. It's on these two assumptions that I build my case for eschewing the debugger altogether in favour of the REPL. If you write code conforming to the above, you have absolutely no need for a debugger. Having said that, it is possible that you need a debugger to wrap your mind around code bases that you inherit, which were written poorly (or equivalently, in a very "object oriented" fashion).
- kitanata 8y ago
  I don’t disagree with your principals of good code quality. I disagree that by following those principals you no longer need to use a debugger or to develop debugging skills. Your post is harmful because it suggest to junior developers that if they must use a debugger they must be developing their software in a poor fashion. This is not true. There are many good reasons to use a debugger, including to develop software or to explore a codebase and to debug your code.
  - hannofcart 8y ago
    > I disagree that by following those principals you no longer need to use a debugger or to develop debugging skills. Using a debugger (as in, software where you step through code) and developing "debugging skills" are entirely different things. I was only commenting on the former. > Your post is harmful because it suggest to junior developers that if they must use a debugger they must be developing their software in a poor fashion. Would it be better if I said: "if you need a debugger, you have are either mucking around in poorly written code that you inherited or you're probably doing it wrong"? > There are many good reasons to use a debugger, including to develop software or to explore a codebase and to debug your code. I concede that exploration of a codebase is a valid use of a debugger.

hannofcart 8y ago

> This is perhaps one of the most harmful statements I’ve ever read on Hacker News. And here I thought I was writing an innocuous comment on debugging code. Hyperbole much? > There are a LOT of different ways to write software... Writing a React app is very different from writing a game in Unity, which is very different than writing a game engine in C++. It's interesting that you brought up these 3 use cases. I started my career working for a shop that wrote a game engine in C++, then moved to Unity. I now write React apps for a living. Do I know you? :) With the exception of a few corner cases, like portions of code that does rendering, and HFT software, where performance concerns trump everything else, what I have seen in that time is the following: 1) decomposing your code into smaller functions is objectively better than NOT doing so. 2) writing functions that don't mutate its local variables is objectively better than writing functions that DO. By "objectively better", I mean that the code written conforming to the above have the following characteristics: - more readable than code that does not. - more testable than code that does not. - more re-usable than code that does not. It's on these two assumptions that I build my case for eschewing the debugger altogether in favour of the REPL. If you write code conforming to the above, you have absolutely no need for a debugger. Having said that, it is possible that you need a debugger to wrap your mind around code bases that you inherit, which were written poorly (or equivalently, in a very "object oriented" fashion).

kitanata 8y ago
I don’t disagree with your principals of good code quality. I disagree that by following those principals you no longer need to use a debugger or to develop debugging skills. Your post is harmful because it suggest to junior developers that if they must use a debugger they must be developing their software in a poor fashion. This is not true. There are many good reasons to use a debugger, including to develop software or to explore a codebase and to debug your code.
- hannofcart 8y ago
  > I disagree that by following those principals you no longer need to use a debugger or to develop debugging skills. Using a debugger (as in, software where you step through code) and developing "debugging skills" are entirely different things. I was only commenting on the former. > Your post is harmful because it suggest to junior developers that if they must use a debugger they must be developing their software in a poor fashion. Would it be better if I said: "if you need a debugger, you have are either mucking around in poorly written code that you inherited or you're probably doing it wrong"? > There are many good reasons to use a debugger, including to develop software or to explore a codebase and to debug your code. I concede that exploration of a codebase is a valid use of a debugger.