[jcelerier]

In c++ for debugging a mid-sized app, gdb will sometime take up to 5 min to start (assuming no remote symbol cache used). On fairly powerful hardware - i7 13000-something, 64g of RAM. I have the time to do 15 compile-edit-run cycles adding prints in that time span before I have even reached main() in it. (And I really tried every optimisation, gdb-index, caches, split DWARF etc. It jus is absolutely mind bogglingly slow and sometimes will even just crash when reaching a breakpoint. Same for lldb. Those are just not reliable tools. And I'm not even talking of the MSVS debugger which I once timed to take 18 minutes from "start debugging" to actually showing a window with all the symbol server stuff.

[SleepyMyroslav]

Vs story does not match my experience for AAA game projects. First vs always had start debugging without loading any symbols at all. 2nd one can load each one module on demand. 3rd local file cache for symbol servers can be very much warm (ie have most of needed symbols in RAM). 4th if your project is stuck on old Vs version you can still debug with latest version of debugger in many cases. Ie for us there are no limits of how many versions of vs dev has on their pc. It might be only available if org has volume deals with Ms though.

Downloading symbols for first time from network symbol server is long but its not part of debugging cycle, at least after 1st run.