[zeroEscape]

I appreciate the comment, but I'd like to make some counter arguments.

You say there are benefits to using a debugger, but I've never had any issues not using a debugger. I've been coding for 26 years. The worst thing that's ever happened to me is that I once commented out a couple lines of code, forgot to uncomment them and pushed it to production. This affected maybe 0.001% of our users. Of course, I've learned to be more careful since then. Regardless, I've asked myself many times over the years every single time I make a mistake if it could have been prevented using a debugger and the answer is always no.

You say that you use a debugger to step through every line of code to examine the state and state changes, but I always do this in my head and have never had any issues. My colleagues always use a debugger and they constantly make mistakes. I often feel that the reason they make so many mistakes is because they rely so heavily on the debugger that it has a negative impact on their ability to analyze code in their head.

This is also why I always teach my son to do math in his head and never on paper. Relying too much on calculators and paper is in my opinion the reason why so many students perform poorly in math. But this is of course another topic.

[nradov]

It's possible you're just a much better programmer than I am and write optimal code with very few defects. I am no genius and have to rely on tools to work around my mental limitations. But I suspect you would find some latent defects in your code if you adopted the discipline I recommended above.