[yitchelle]

I have been an embedded developer working quite close to the metal. Over the years, I have noticed that the further you get away from the metal, the less reliant you are on the debugger. In projects past, I have worked with MathLab developers who are deploying their code on a multicore CPU and they have no need to have a debugger (in the traditional sense) in their tool set.

[thedirt0115]

This is exactly what I was thinking, but couldn't phrase it quite as nicely. I never feel the need to reach for pdb when writing Python, but C on microcontroller? I need my gdb.

[pmarreck]

Why do you think debuggers are so necessary at the metal when they aren't further above the metal?

[yitchelle]

When debugging code that are close to the metal such as device drivers or interrupt service routines, the code's behavior is very tightly coupled to the metal.

For example, the interrupt service routine that your debugging could not reacting fast enough and you need to find out why? Priority of the said interrupt is correctly configured and it is blocked by a higher priotiy interrupt. This type of behaviour difficult to track down if a debugger is not used.