[PontifexMinimus]

> With the printf you might not have considered all the variables you need, so you have to go back, insert, and recompile

In some languages, such as Python, it's fairly easy to write a debug-print function that prints all the local variables (as well as the function name and line number it was called in).

[9dev]

That misses the mark. You can’t really compare a hackish ”print the world as a string“ function against a debuggers ability to stop time, walk around, pick things up, slice them open, put them somewhere else, and start time again.

That’s not just not the same league, it’s playing a whole different game.

[PontifexMinimus]

You call it haskish but it's something I've done in the pasty and find useful.

I don't find debuggers all that useful, because I often find I'm spending more time thinking about how to use the debugger rather than how to fix the bug; since debugging is hard I want tools that I don't have to think about at all, as they distract me from thinking about the bug.

Maybe that's because I don't have enough experience with a particular tool. If I used a debugger more often it would come naturally to me. But I find most of my bugs are simple enough that that doesn't happen, because I write modular code and TDD.

[9dev]

I mean sure, logging metadata is better than nothing. But that’s akin to saying you don’t need a car because your feet have never failed you at crossing distances. Yes, you need to learn driving first, and that can seem hard at the beginning, but I doubt you’d want to go back to walking after.

To each their own, but I wholeheartedly recommend learning about debuggers. It should be one of the core tools of every software engineer.