3 ms·

I feel like the author gets close to the point but fails to drive it home: step-through debugging is unbelievably cumbersome. During a typical step-through debu

by SPBS 5y ago

I feel like the author gets close to the point but fails to drive it home: step-through debugging is unbelievably cumbersome. During a typical step-through debugging session, 90% of the time is spent on lines you are completely not interested in. Oh, did you accidentally skip the important point because of how tedious it was to keep spamming step-over/step-in? Better start over again. With print debugging, you set up your print statements strategically and -zing-, you get your results back. Feedback loop shorter. 100% of the lines are the ones you are interested in, because you put the print statements there. I'm still waiting for the feature where you can conditionally stop at some breakpoint -only- if some other breakpoint/watchpoint was crossed over. It's not a conditional breakpoint, because conditional breakpoints can only watch variables, not other breakpoints. You could of course set some variable depending on whether some section was entered and then conditionally break based on that variable. But then you're back to print debugging land, having to manually insert code in order debug the program. Debuggers are superior when it comes to interrogating the exact state of some variables, as well as the decision paths the program takes. For anything simpler, print debugging simply offers the better developer experience.

Stratoscope 5y ago
> I'm still waiting for the feature where you can conditionally stop at some breakpoint -only- if some other breakpoint/watchpoint was crossed over. PyCharm 2021.1 has this, so I would guess that other members of the IntelliJ family probably have it too. Set a breakpoint and then right-click the red dot, and click More to open the full Breakpoints dialog. Open the drop-down under "Disable until hitting the following breakpoint:" and select the other breakpoint that should enable this one. And thank you for mentioning this! I didn't know PyCharm had this feature until I took a look after seeing your comment. This will be super useful.
kmfpl 5y ago
With lldb you can do that, basically you have the option of running commands when a given breakpoint is hit, so you can just make it place another breakpoint, and it will be placed only if the first breakpoint is hit. I assume you can do something like this on gdb as well.
bc4m 5y ago
Why would I spend any time stepping through lines I'm not interested in? I set breakpoints on the important parts and let the program run until a breakpoint is hit. I stop at a breakpoint only after another breakpoint is hit all the time. You set the first breakpoint and run the program. It gets hit and pauses, you set the second breakpoint, then resume. I'm just not getting how print debugging is the better experience.
astura 5y ago
>During a typical step-through debugging session, 90% of the time is spent on lines you are completely not interested in. Oh, did you accidentally skip the important point because of how tedious it was to keep spamming step-over/step-in? Better start over again. No offense, but this sounds like you just really need to learn how to use a debugger - This is in no way a "typical step-through debugging session." I've been a professional software developer for 16 years and I've never once in my life "spamm[ed] step-over/step-in" >I'm still waiting for the feature where you can conditionally stop at some breakpoint -only- if some other breakpoint/watchpoint was crossed over. This is trivial to do, place two breakpoints, disable one. When the breakpoint is hit, enable the second (and optionally, disable the first).

by SPBS 5y ago

Stratoscope 5y ago

> I'm still waiting for the feature where you can conditionally stop at some breakpoint -only- if some other breakpoint/watchpoint was crossed over. PyCharm 2021.1 has this, so I would guess that other members of the IntelliJ family probably have it too. Set a breakpoint and then right-click the red dot, and click More to open the full Breakpoints dialog. Open the drop-down under "Disable until hitting the following breakpoint:" and select the other breakpoint that should enable this one. And thank you for mentioning this! I didn't know PyCharm had this feature until I took a look after seeing your comment. This will be super useful.

kmfpl 5y ago

With lldb you can do that, basically you have the option of running commands when a given breakpoint is hit, so you can just make it place another breakpoint, and it will be placed only if the first breakpoint is hit. I assume you can do something like this on gdb as well.

bc4m 5y ago

Why would I spend any time stepping through lines I'm not interested in? I set breakpoints on the important parts and let the program run until a breakpoint is hit. I stop at a breakpoint only after another breakpoint is hit all the time. You set the first breakpoint and run the program. It gets hit and pauses, you set the second breakpoint, then resume. I'm just not getting how print debugging is the better experience.

astura 5y ago

>During a typical step-through debugging session, 90% of the time is spent on lines you are completely not interested in. Oh, did you accidentally skip the important point because of how tedious it was to keep spamming step-over/step-in? Better start over again. No offense, but this sounds like you just really need to learn how to use a debugger - This is in no way a "typical step-through debugging session." I've been a professional software developer for 16 years and I've never once in my life "spamm[ed] step-over/step-in" >I'm still waiting for the feature where you can conditionally stop at some breakpoint -only- if some other breakpoint/watchpoint was crossed over. This is trivial to do, place two breakpoints, disable one. When the breakpoint is hit, enable the second (and optionally, disable the first).