[bsder]

Actually, using the UART interface to send text breadcrumbs out the port is a standard technique in embedded, too ...

The article hits the point of print debugging, you get to see the backward in time.

By the time you hit "the problem", the pointer is NULL, the memory is trashed, the system is deadlocked, etc. You need to reason about how you got there.

There is a reason why the next step up from basic debugging embedded is "streaming trace"--effectively print on steroids.

[Shikadi]

Memory watches let you see exactly when the pointer becomes null, and the call stack. In that particular case, the debugger is much faster and easier. Not saying print debugging is useless, but I do find many of the arguments in these comments seem to think the primary feature of a debugger is to step through code