I'm not too offended by this answer. We all reach for it before we seriously think about the debugger. But debugging should be treated as a specialist skill that's almost as complex as programming, and just as empowering. There are two ways I can think of right away, in which the mastery of debuggers can enrich us.
The first is that it gives you an unparalleled insight into the real stuff behind the scenes. You'll never stop learning new things about the machine with a debugger. But at the minimum, it will make you a much better programmer. With the newly found context, those convoluted pesky programming guidelines will finally start to make sense.
The second is that print is an option only for a program you have the source code for. A debugger gives you observability and even control over practically any program, even one already in flight or one that's on a different machine altogether. Granted, it's hard to debug a binary program. But in most cases on Linux or BSD, that's only because the source code and the debugging symbols are too large to ship with the software. Most distros and BSDs actually make them available on demand using the debuginfod software. It's a powerful tool in the hands of anyone who wishes to tinker with it. But even without it, Linux gamers are known to ship coredumps to the developers when games crash. Debugging is the doorway to an entirely different world.
I'm not too offended by this answer. We all reach for it before we seriously think about the debugger. But debugging should be treated as a specialist skill that's almost as complex as programming, and just as empowering. There are two ways I can think of right away, in which the mastery of debuggers can enrich us.
The first is that it gives you an unparalleled insight into the real stuff behind the scenes. You'll never stop learning new things about the machine with a debugger. But at the minimum, it will make you a much better programmer. With the newly found context, those convoluted pesky programming guidelines will finally start to make sense.
The second is that print is an option only for a program you have the source code for. A debugger gives you observability and even control over practically any program, even one already in flight or one that's on a different machine altogether. Granted, it's hard to debug a binary program. But in most cases on Linux or BSD, that's only because the source code and the debugging symbols are too large to ship with the software. Most distros and BSDs actually make them available on demand using the debuginfod software. It's a powerful tool in the hands of anyone who wishes to tinker with it. But even without it, Linux gamers are known to ship coredumps to the developers when games crash. Debugging is the doorway to an entirely different world.
“The most effective debugging tool is still careful thought, coupled with judiciously placed print statements.”
- Brian Kernighan
That's the holy Unix justification for self-flagellation via deficient tooling and you're sticking to it.
Although that was true at the time, it was before the creation of modern omniscient debuggers like Pernosco (<https://pernos.co/>).
I could be wrong, but does it have an extra "? BTW I like to use 0x%x or 0x%lx for certain projects.
Very convenient to use LLMs for the that "Please add debug fprintf(stderr, {print var x y here})". The "please comment out the debug fprintfs"