this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Programming
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Kudos to the people who wrote this and it's great for people who use debuggers.
However I'd like to say that I haven't used one in years and don't see any reason to go back.
I've found that there's way simpler practices that have upped my development speed considerably. Simply think about what you're trying to do more carefully, and read over the code until you're sure it's good. It's the fastest way to iterate. Doesn't work? Read and think again.
You can put a format log in there. You can even comment it out, which can be useful later and for other people. It's plain and simple.
When I find myself using log all the time, it's either because I am tired, and I shouldn't be coding any way. Or impatient, which means I'm wasting time and should slow down. Or I have to deal with a library that has a shitty API, which you'll probably want to avoid using any way. And in that case you can use the interactive console to quickly try things out.
Honestly if there's anything I want to get better at it's test driven development. It tells you clearly whether it's working as expected or not.
Since adopting TDD, my debugger use has really dropped off. I think it's partially due to TDD encouraging me to develop more pure functions and push side effects to injectable (and thus mockable) objects.
But every so often I encounter a state that I can't understand how the code gets into, and in those cases being able to step through everything that's going on is incredibly helpful.
I may not use my debugger every day, but when I want it, I'm sure glad it's there.
Same here! Testing up front has made it extremely rare that I have to go back with a debugger later.