[rinrae]

in general I don't think it makes that much of a difference. find what works for you.

(ruby-debug, for example, doesn't feel like a big, heavyweight sledgehammer, so you might just wanna try it out.)

for me, it depends on the complexity of the problem.

when there's something wrong and I have absolutely no idea where to start (which is a bad sign anyway :) ), using the debugger is easier than scattering print statements all over my code. but when one print() will probably tell me what the problem is, I don't bother using the debugger.

(… and thanks for reminding me to learn how to use ruby-debug.)