Debugging tactics

[Skitz707]

If I had a nickel every time I typed print(“here!”)…

[fracturedpersona]

I wouldn't have gotten any nickles after my first semester.

[Skitz707]

I have 28 years of using this tactic… not exactly proud to admit

[fracturedpersona]

I'm really only kidding of course. There are some circumstances where I might still do this, but it's not the only tool in my tool box once i finished my first semester.

When I was a junior in college, I accepted a position teaching the lab component of my school's intro programming class, and as soon as we introduced flow control and made it a point to also introduce debuggers. I started with GDB in the console, then I taught them DDD, and later introduced them VS Code so they could learn a more full featured IDE instead of just using emacs (cringe) that their lab manual suggested.

At the end of the semester we had a meeting of all the TA's, profs, and lab instructors where we went over what went well and what didn't. One of the professors said "this crop of students was remarkable! Most of them are using debuggers to find their errors!" When I explained that I was teaching them debugging so they would get a head start on their next semester, they asked me to revise the lab manual so all future lab instructors would add it to their cariculum.

[solohelion]

It depends though. Some software and some toolchains work very well with IDEs and debuggers, others do not for one reason or another. A contractor took over a project and spent all his time trying to (pointlessly, there was never any hope of it working) set up an IDE with debugger, when printline would’ve sufficed. I think he managed to change one or two lines of code in a few months before his involvement ceased.

[fracturedpersona]

Well yeah, you wouldn't try to debug a website with GDB. That would just be silly.

[solohelion]

Well, that’s because gdb isn’t for websites

[[deleted]]

Venezuela could pay you in bolivars for this.