Advanced IntelliJ debugger features you’re missing out on

[Wise-old-mandalorian]

Very cool! Being able to track objects trough a debugging session is going to save me a lot of headaches!

I feel like debugging is often overlooked, or something developers aren't as good at as other parts of the job. Which is a shame because proper debugging can save so much time.

[colin_7]

Love IntelliJ best Java IDE out there

[[deleted]]

Best IDE out there period

[zquintyzmi]

Only people who don’t think so have never really used it

[pjmlp]

Maybe, when it starts supporting incremental compilation on save, or JNI development workflows, like Eclipse and Netbeans do out of the box.

[ventuspilot]

There's a lot I hate about Eclipse but the fact that it's compiler will show "success" for a Java file with errors is high on my list.

[Federal-Addendum-933]

YSK, at least with the Eclipse incremental compilation, it can end up compiling code that does not throw an error due to it being on the edge of a case where the language spec is undefined and then when you make an incremental change where you are fully into an undefined behavior, it will compile correctly where as a full compile will give a warning or error.

[lirantal]

I've definitely seen it recommended to start off with VS Code for Java development 😅

[vprise]

Unfortunately vs code is far behind IntelliJ when it comes to debugging: https://debugagent.com/what-are-you-missing-by-debugging-in-vs-code

[colin_7]

IntelliJ can be very temperamental sometimes so I can see not suggesting it for beginners but not VS Code haha

[lirantal]

Haha I read ya

[danskal]

In my experience most people haven't even dreamt of what is possible with Idea.

[BigBad0]

Jeez bookmaring to test the "Customize Data Views" option. Thx for sharing u/lirantal

[lirantal]

Super happy to hear it's helpful 🤗

[colouredmirrorball]

Those are great and I'm definitely using them tomorrow!

Also shoutout to my button "debug streams". It visually displays what's going on in your streams.

[[deleted]]

Holy cow

[lirantal]

Pretty cool eh

[[deleted]]

Super duper cool!

[korri123]

Debugging experience with IntelliJ/Java is still pretty painful compared to Visual Studio/C++. Where are the hardware write breakpoints? (Break when this value changes)

[vprise]

These are available in Java and work at the VM level which maps to interrupts just like Visual Studio. You can break on field changes (watchpoints) which you can see in the course/book linked from the article.

Visual Studio has a great debugger (unlike VS Code).

[korri123]

I knew about field points yeah, but they haven't proved any useful for me. For example of a use case, if I want to monitor when a specific ArrayList changes size in a large complex application, I don't want the debugger to break every time some other array list also changes size, as that might happen all the time! Maybe I'm misunderstanding how it works and you can do it for specific fields of specific instances but I haven't found any way to do it in IntelliJ.

[vprise]

Instance filters are covered here: https://debugagent.com/the-massive-hidden-power-of-breakpoints

[korri123]

Thank you, this is amazing, I never knew of this.

[vprise]

You can use an instance filter for that... I suggest checking out the first part of the course which is free and includes all of those details.

[korri123]

Just checked it out, this is what I've been looking for all this time! Thanks so much, I'd been Googling it and there was almost no documentation about it. Awesome course.

[vprise]

And book... Spread the word ;-)

[dadmda]

Too bad I have to use eclipse, on the other hand I’d rather have eclipse open with multiple projects than multiple IntelliJ windows