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by armada651 886 days ago
When I used Xcode for the first (and so far only) time I was surprised I could actually view bitmaps in the debugger and I've wondered why that's not commonplace ever since.
2 comments

I suppose one reason is that images can be stored in many different ways in memory. For OpenCV images in C++ the Visual Studio extension Image Watch is quite nice, I think it's been around for more than 15 years:

https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=VisualCP...

There's also a recent extension called Image Preview for path references:

https://devblogs.microsoft.com/visualstudio/working-with-ima...

Most people don't know what they're missing. None of the pages linked (in either the submission itself or the comments here) or other comments actually show any of these graphical features in use.

This is a problem that extends beyond this submission and talk of debuggers. It's basically insurmountable for anyone who didn't use Google Reader to know what the experience is using it looked and felt like (and in a few months when it will no longer be possible to use Google Podcasts, there'll be another casualty).

Reading your comment, all I know is that Xcode lets you "view bitmaps in the debugger", but that's a pretty varied range of possibilities for someone who hasn't actually seen it.

Folks who are looking to have an impact would do well to document their setups and show how they actually get work done, lest we end up in a future where people don't know how to run a Python program[1] because nobody was ever explicit about it, instead relying on tacit familiarity.

1. <https://corecursive.com/brain-injury-with-jason-mcdonald/>

The fact that the best example I could find being a StackOverflow question about whether such a feature even exists kinda proves your point: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2780793/xcode-debugging-...

The answer even has a comment saying:

> Ages coding in Xcode and I never knew about this feature! This is awesome!!! Thanks a lot

We really have a problem in this industry about documenting institutional knowledge huh?