4 ms·

For many nontrivial debugging tasks. You need to record a lot of past context - e.g. you can put a breakpoint when a bad decision gets made, but the data causin

For many nontrivial debugging tasks. You need to record a lot of past context - e.g. you can put a breakpoint when a bad decision gets made, but the data causing this decision likely accumulated over a few tens/hundreds of previous iterations - and in particular one bad iteration that you don't (yet) know how to characterize. In such a case, setting up watches and pressing F5 a hundred times to get to bad iteration is inferior to adding a print/log and scrolling back to it.

flohofwoe 3y ago
It's not one or the other, most debug sessions will also include some sort of adhoc logging. Also "modern" debuggers ("modern" as in "this century") offer a lot more than just simple on/off breakpoints: conditional breakpoints, data read/write breakpoints (e.g. who wrote this broken piece of data), "tracepoints" which don't stop execution but instead log out a message or run some scripted action, etc etc... A good debugger is essentially an interactive program state explorer and visualizer, ideally it would be fully integrated with the actual development process (e.g. edit, compile, run, break somewhere to inspect program state, tweak some code while program is suspended, rewind a program state a bit and continue running with the modified code, rinse, repeat...).
- archagon 3y ago
  The problem is that the debugger conditional logic has to be written outside the local context of the code, and probably in a different language to boot. For example, in Xcode, you’re entering commands into a tiny box in the breakpoint popup that won’t actually tell you if you got the syntax wrong or not.
  - anthonypasq 3y ago
    guess im lucky to be a java dev then lol
- beagle3 3y ago
  Which python debugger with these qualities? Which Javascript debugger? Which Go debugger? Seriously asking; I am well versed in everything gdb, but I often revert to logging and "import pdb; pdb.breakpoint()" when I have to debug Python.
  - mathisfun123 3y ago
    Jetbrains - never leave home without it.
anthonypasq 3y ago
you can make a conditional breakpoint

flohofwoe 3y ago

It's not one or the other, most debug sessions will also include some sort of adhoc logging. Also "modern" debuggers ("modern" as in "this century") offer a lot more than just simple on/off breakpoints: conditional breakpoints, data read/write breakpoints (e.g. who wrote this broken piece of data), "tracepoints" which don't stop execution but instead log out a message or run some scripted action, etc etc... A good debugger is essentially an interactive program state explorer and visualizer, ideally it would be fully integrated with the actual development process (e.g. edit, compile, run, break somewhere to inspect program state, tweak some code while program is suspended, rewind a program state a bit and continue running with the modified code, rinse, repeat...).

archagon 3y ago
The problem is that the debugger conditional logic has to be written outside the local context of the code, and probably in a different language to boot. For example, in Xcode, you’re entering commands into a tiny box in the breakpoint popup that won’t actually tell you if you got the syntax wrong or not.
- anthonypasq 3y ago
  guess im lucky to be a java dev then lol
beagle3 3y ago
Which python debugger with these qualities? Which Javascript debugger? Which Go debugger? Seriously asking; I am well versed in everything gdb, but I often revert to logging and "import pdb; pdb.breakpoint()" when I have to debug Python.
- mathisfun123 3y ago
  Jetbrains - never leave home without it.

anthonypasq 3y ago

you can make a conditional breakpoint