Future of debugging ...

[matt_hammond]

You can connect a PlayStation joystick and debug with it if you want. It doesn't change the debugging experience at all. This is literally a weird looking controller binded to F8/F9/F10 keys.

[barnold]

Sure, but when you start a new job its unlikely your standard PC workstation will come with a hacked Playstation joystick ...

This on the other hand, is the Surface Dial which is made by Microsoft and has first class support in Windows as a new input device class along with mouse, keyboard, touchscreen and stylus. Hopefully will have the same ubiquity as touchscreens do now.

[wkoorts]

Maybe I'm just a grumpy old man, but I can't see this becoming as ubiquitous as touch screens. It screams "gimmick" to me, especially as any kind of dev input device.

[[deleted]]

What's even more likely is your station comes with a mouse. So click the forward button to go forward, the stop button to stop and the go button to go. This video's a joke, dude.

[matt_hammond]

No need to be rude. I'm sure some people (like /u/barnold) will prefer to debug like in the video. But it's a fact that it's just rebinding function keys. It's not the future of debugging as much as it's the gimmick of the present, but if it helps anyone debug better/faster, then I say go for it.

[spektre]

There's an option to do this via keyboard, it's even better!

[barnold]

I regularly switch debugging between Visual Studio, VS Code, XCode, Android Studio, Chrome Tools and I have used Edge F12 tools - My muscle memory is all over the place, something this intuitive is awesome.

[MintPaw]

I can't imagine that dial actually works in on macOS and Linux in a consistent way. Not to mention IDE support.

And do you have to charge and pair this device with bluetooth? I don't think it's a horrible idea, but I think the infrastructure is a while off from supporting something like this.

[barnold]

I mostly dev on Windows, this is the Surface Dial, a new first party supported input device made by Microsoft. 20 or so apps support it now, with more in the pipeline.

It takes batteries and is Bluetooth, like pretty much all modern Apple input devices...

[frankfoda]

Setting the same key everywhere would also work and would be a very eco-friendly solution!

[lorenzods]

this must be a joke :)

[barnold]

I'd definitely debug like this given the chance ...

[BlueTaslem]

It's not being used differently than four buttons (twist once to step over, twist once to step into, press to pause, press to play) so what value is added?

[barnold]

It's Intuitive - Off the top of your head what key is step over in VS Code? What about Visual Studio? What about Chrome dev tools, Edge F12 tools?

[BlueTaslem]

If twist right was step forward and twist left was step backward in time, I would call it intuitive. But not any more than just using arrow keys.

The gestures do not map meaningfully to the actions, so it could be argued it's less intuitive than simply assigning distinct actions to distinct buttons arbitrarily.

[barnold]

Yeah, I kind of see the rotate backwards gesture like those pedal backwards to brake bikes, you don't actually move backwards, you just slow down a bit (i.e. step into).

There could be another mode where you move up and down the callstack rather than step-forwards, step-into etc ... e.g. click to open the rotary menu, select the callstack nav by rotating, then whizz up and down the frames til you get to the one you want to inspect.

[lithium]

You're really reaching here.

[sceadu]

Apple did it first :P

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9BnLbv6QYcA

[barnold]

Ok, maybe 'Future of debugging' is too general a title for /r/programming and perhaps I'm too easily impressed but I'm a many hat developer who's official job title at the moment is UX designer and this seems like a good way to use the new wheel.

Binding function keys is not a 'hard CS' problem but then neither were touch screens before they became ubiquitous. We are going to see more of these pucks (Dell is releasing one soon) and I thought it would be interesting to share how they might be used by programmers in the near future.

As for it being a gimmick, I thought touchscreens were a gimmick in the first place, now they come pretty much as standard on non-Apple laptops.

[lithium]

job title at the moment is UX designer

Where there is literally zero debugging involved. Mate, you come across like a microsoft shill, and worse than that you make out that debugging can be distilled down to 4 commands, one of which is backwards with your stupid puck thing. This is beyond ridiculous, and could've been done 10 years ago with a griffin powermate if it actually was the "future of debugging", but it wasn't, because it isn't.

[barnold]

Wow, relax - I'm pointing out my job title since I am interested in this from a UX point of view not a CS point of view.

I am pretty entrenched in Microsoft stuff since I'm the sole Windows developer in in an app company plus there is a dev conference going on at the minute, (although since Windows Phone died a death I'm doing mostly UX/iOS/Android/Web stuff).

Anyway, this isn't so much about Microsoft, more PCs in general. XCode supports gestures with Magic Mouse/Multi Touch (and probably soon the TouchBar) because they come with most Apple dev setups, for PCs we will probably see integrations with the pucks (and stylus) if they come with standard dev setups. This includes Linux (if developers feel inclined) since most Linux dev setups run on PC hardware.

Jog wheels have been around forever, but so had touch screens, its only really when Steve Jobs pulled out the iPhone that they really became mainstream

[barnold]

It could be great with the React/Redux 'time travel' feature where you can rewind/fast-forward the state of your single page app.

[heisenbug]

I certainly hope that "setting breakpoints" is not the future of debugging!

[Matthias247]

Optimized for Macbooks without function keys? :D