Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by m4xm4n 1406 days ago
I like debuggers, but I don't always use debuggers. Typically because I can find the problem quicker w/ a puts/print/etc. than the time it takes me to run the debugger.

I also do a lot of web stuff, and if you're running some server process and you're not running the server process through a debugger directly, then you need to find and attach to the server PID, etc., then maybe deal with threads, and it's just a lot of upfront effort when I could just find the issue by throwing a puts/print somewhere or writing a test.

I'm not anti-debugger, I'm just busy and it's easier to put something in my code (which is how I frequently jump into debuggers too, e.g. binding.irb, binding.pry, debugger, byebug, etc.)

the CLI debuggers (gdb, lldb, etc.) are great when I really need them, but they're a pain in the ass to setup with things that are not C or C++, editor integrations sometimes need setup, and using them without setting breakpoints visually is tedious.