7 ms·

This looks like a modern-day ddd [1]. Sorely needed. (Not much by me, since I don't do a lot of C these days, but I'd definitely use this if I did.) [1]: https

This looks like a modern-day ddd [1]. Sorely needed. (Not much by me, since I don't do a lot of C these days, but I'd definitely use this if I did.) [1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/ https://www.gnu.org/software/ddd/

pjmlp 7y ago
Or to go more into the past, a modern day Zortech C++ debugger. I still make use of DDD, one of the debuggers that made my UNIX development experience more enjoyable (vs PC/Mac tooling).
- kccqzy 7y ago
  What prevents you from using DDD on a PC or Mac though? You may need to install an X server, but you should still be able to run it.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    My point was that UNIX tooling did not match PC and Mac IDE based tooling and DDD helped to make it less painful. Nowadays I focus on Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and Google platforms and languages, so DDD isn't something I miss.
acqq 7y ago
What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because that's what we had in bad old days before the monitors were able to show pixels -- the text consoles could actually show only text and the technology used was too poor to have nice pale background and black letters. But why would somebody want this on the modern displays, except because he does that instead of properly adjusting the background light or because "the real cool guys look at black screens" is beyond me. Seriously, the displays aren't cheap eighties displays anymore. And even then the expensive ones already looked much better by default than these "modern" themes now. /end of the old guy's lawn rant Otherwise, I definitely like every debugging tool that tries to have a good GUI.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Basically that is how I feel when I see HD colour screens being used to organize XTerms, similar to the IBM XWindows terminals I got to use in 1994.
- gpderetta 7y ago
  I have tried to use a lighter background because apparently "that's the correct thing". After experiencing significant eye fatigue I switched back to dark blue.
- dragonwriter 7y ago
  > What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use (though it looks pretty at a glance, and if you are composing things for print WYSIWYG may be more important than what is most comfortable on the screen.) We tried light themes as the almost invariable rule for the first several decades of GUIs, but recently got over it. (Light backgrounds are awesome on reflective media, and if eInk was cheap and fast enough to use for primary monitors for coding we’d do that.)
  - acqq 7y ago
    > Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use I claim it’s not true. If one would measure The light flux of my screen I’m sure it wouldn’t be higher than that of the paper when reading in good light conditions. I claim that it’s dependent of how one configures his display.
    - scoutt 7y ago
      Emitting light != reflecting light. I used to battle too against "dark modes". But I was forced to use VSCode for one project (since a couple of months), and I have to say that I became so used to it that now I want to use "dark mode" everywhere I can. Unfortunately IDEs for embedded like KEIL uVision will never get such feature, and now it's a pain to go back to white background.
t3lp3r10n 7y ago
I love the ability of ddd to plot 1d and 2d arrays in gnuplot, while you debug, updating the plot after each next instruction. Really handy for numerical codes. I have not found yet another tool with the same functionality. The python calls from gdb allows to do something similar but does not update automatically and you have to use much more code
lokedhs 7y ago
That reminds me about that one day in at Sun back in the late 90's when I compiled Solaris in debug mode and set up KGDB. I was running a full Solaris kernel while anothe rmachine was running GDB and DDD. I was able to visualise all the kernel structures in realtime. It was significantly more usable that I would have imagined it to be. Can you do something similar these days with Linux?
- agapon 7y ago
  Of course.
- mistrial9 7y ago
  curious - the Sun developers I saw in the late 90s had a multi-window debugger but the local variables Did Not Update, and had to be 'refreshed' manually; at the same time, I had MetrwoWerks IDE Debugger on a Macintosh, and easily had all locals, source code, stack, RAM inspection by structure and more, all updating with every change. The Sun devs were being PAID a LOT more, yet their tools looked primitive and the contextual knowledge to use them was much greater..
  - lokedhs 7y ago
    I'm not sure. I wasn't working as a kernel developer. I did have to debug stuff though to find bugs or explain certain behaviours. I guess one reason it wasn't used much is because it was a hassle to set up, and I think it got a bit slow when you had a lot of information displayed. I do recall not using this setup much in practice, as just breaking into the debugger on the machine itself was faster and easier. You had to lot of options when it came to working on the Solaris kernel, and the code was so easy to understand. In fact, I believe the Solaris code base is the best C code I've ever worked with. It's a pity what happened after Oracle took over.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Exactly my kind of experience learning UNIX, while coming from Amiga/PC/Mac IDE world, back in those days.
- ktm5j 7y ago

pjmlp 7y ago

Or to go more into the past, a modern day Zortech C++ debugger. I still make use of DDD, one of the debuggers that made my UNIX development experience more enjoyable (vs PC/Mac tooling).

kccqzy 7y ago
What prevents you from using DDD on a PC or Mac though? You may need to install an X server, but you should still be able to run it.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  My point was that UNIX tooling did not match PC and Mac IDE based tooling and DDD helped to make it less painful. Nowadays I focus on Apple, Microsoft, Oracle and Google platforms and languages, so DDD isn't something I miss.

acqq 7y ago

What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because that's what we had in bad old days before the monitors were able to show pixels -- the text consoles could actually show only text and the technology used was too poor to have nice pale background and black letters. But why would somebody want this on the modern displays, except because he does that instead of properly adjusting the background light or because "the real cool guys look at black screens" is beyond me. Seriously, the displays aren't cheap eighties displays anymore. And even then the expensive ones already looked much better by default than these "modern" themes now. /end of the old guy's lawn rant Otherwise, I definitely like every debugging tool that tries to have a good GUI.

pjmlp 7y ago
Basically that is how I feel when I see HD colour screens being used to organize XTerms, similar to the IBM XWindows terminals I got to use in 1994.
gpderetta 7y ago
I have tried to use a lighter background because apparently "that's the correct thing". After experiencing significant eye fatigue I switched back to dark blue.
dragonwriter 7y ago
> What I don't understand with this "modernity" is these "black background shimmery text" themes. Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use (though it looks pretty at a glance, and if you are composing things for print WYSIWYG may be more important than what is most comfortable on the screen.) We tried light themes as the almost invariable rule for the first several decades of GUIs, but recently got over it. (Light backgrounds are awesome on reflective media, and if eInk was cheap and fast enough to use for primary monitors for coding we’d do that.)
- acqq 7y ago
  > Because we're mostly using emissive displays, and it turns out that trying to imitate what works on paper on an emissive display sucks for long term use I claim it’s not true. If one would measure The light flux of my screen I’m sure it wouldn’t be higher than that of the paper when reading in good light conditions. I claim that it’s dependent of how one configures his display.
  - scoutt 7y ago
    Emitting light != reflecting light. I used to battle too against "dark modes". But I was forced to use VSCode for one project (since a couple of months), and I have to say that I became so used to it that now I want to use "dark mode" everywhere I can. Unfortunately IDEs for embedded like KEIL uVision will never get such feature, and now it's a pain to go back to white background.

t3lp3r10n 7y ago

I love the ability of ddd to plot 1d and 2d arrays in gnuplot, while you debug, updating the plot after each next instruction. Really handy for numerical codes. I have not found yet another tool with the same functionality. The python calls from gdb allows to do something similar but does not update automatically and you have to use much more code

lokedhs 7y ago

That reminds me about that one day in at Sun back in the late 90's when I compiled Solaris in debug mode and set up KGDB. I was running a full Solaris kernel while anothe rmachine was running GDB and DDD. I was able to visualise all the kernel structures in realtime. It was significantly more usable that I would have imagined it to be. Can you do something similar these days with Linux?

agapon 7y ago
Of course.
mistrial9 7y ago
curious - the Sun developers I saw in the late 90s had a multi-window debugger but the local variables Did Not Update, and had to be 'refreshed' manually; at the same time, I had MetrwoWerks IDE Debugger on a Macintosh, and easily had all locals, source code, stack, RAM inspection by structure and more, all updating with every change. The Sun devs were being PAID a LOT more, yet their tools looked primitive and the contextual knowledge to use them was much greater..
- lokedhs 7y ago
  I'm not sure. I wasn't working as a kernel developer. I did have to debug stuff though to find bugs or explain certain behaviours. I guess one reason it wasn't used much is because it was a hassle to set up, and I think it got a bit slow when you had a lot of information displayed. I do recall not using this setup much in practice, as just breaking into the debugger on the machine itself was faster and easier. You had to lot of options when it came to working on the Solaris kernel, and the code was so easy to understand. In fact, I believe the Solaris code base is the best C code I've ever worked with. It's a pity what happened after Oracle took over.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Exactly my kind of experience learning UNIX, while coming from Amiga/PC/Mac IDE world, back in those days.
ktm5j 7y ago