Comment by agumonkey
3 months ago
Most of my colleagues never use a debugger even though they use vscode. I (the weird emacs user) actually had to show them how to use one, but they still don't.
3 months ago
Most of my colleagues never use a debugger even though they use vscode. I (the weird emacs user) actually had to show them how to use one, but they still don't.
Are they actually programmers? Or just people who pretend to know how to code? How can you be a professional programmer and not use a debugger? Also not sure what VS Code has to do with it, it's not Visual Studio proper.
I know plenty of professional programmers (job title states so) that not even they do not use a debugger, many don’t even know how to install/use one or even the very concept of “execute step by step”. Plenty of python users don’t know what pdb is (as matter of fact, have never met one that does know it!). Also plenty of embedded developers writing C or C++ or Java
They go all the time adding hundreds of print(f) of log_* function calls. Often they don’t care to remove them after the fact, as I ask them to, often comes “can/will be useful to detect future bugs”
I’m in the automotive industry, where is known to be a disaster in topic SW. but I think it is also common in other industries. I have seen it in telco already.
While I agree that knowing a debugger is important, and as a leader won’t hire somebody who do not use it, is a fact that many people don’t use it, and are doing ok.
Last but not least, it must be said sometimes you have to go to prints: in fact yesterday I had to, as I was debugging a library with sockets, which would timeout pretty quickly. I used dprintf in gdb, but the advantage to simple prints was not huge.
>>Last but not least, it must be said sometimes you have to go to prints
Well yes, obviously - it's an indespensible tool in any arsenal, I just cannot fathom(as a C++ low level engineer) how someone can be a professional programmer where they are paid for their job and they don't know to use a debugger even to just do a basic pause and step through flow. But then again I don't work with any python programmers, so maybe that's why.
They managed to grow a career out of a minimum set of skills, printf was enough I guess. Also they leverage stupid IT shops where squeaky wheel gets the grease.. being efficient at debugging would almost prove harmful in their world.
printf will get you far.
In C etc. printf calls also make all intermediate variables observable in the debugger. You can debug programs where you can't pause it. Etc.