Daniel Lemire's blog

, 2 min read

Are debuggers obselete?

3 thoughts on “Are debuggers obselete?”

  1. Yes, this is supposed to be an highly-commented-on controversial topic. I agree with your analysis regarding debuggers.

    Regarding embedded applications versus web applications, do you really think there are more distinct embedded applications than web applications?

  2. Is this supposed to be a highly-commented-on controversial topic, or one that helps people? :^)

    I must admit, sheepishly, that I’ve always been too lazy to learn to use a debugger and still rely on printf or the equivalent. Often, determine that the bug is more than 100,000 iterations into a 1,000,000 iteration loop; do any debuggers provide breakpoints that only trigger after being passed through n times? A binary search through the loop iterations is a fairly quick thing to do with a test and printf.

    “…most modern applications are web applications.”

    Now you’re really just pandering for comments! Everyone knows most applications are embedded.

  3. uccai_siravas says:

    I find the rbreak command of the gdb useful for understanding how modules are used in large programs. Suppose that all functions exported by module A starts with A_xxx, then setting rbreak ^A_.* and running the program gives us a clue how the module A is used.