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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Debuggers Are Overrated" |
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date = 2019-07-08 |
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[taxonomies] |
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tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "debuggers", "debugging"] |
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+++ |
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I heard a lot of people complaining that code editors are bad 'cause it's hard |
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to attach a debugger. I'd claim that this vision is wrong. |
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But let's take a thing out of the way beforehand: I'm not saying debuggers are |
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_bad_ you should never use them. Debuggers have their use, but every time I |
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had to use one, it was because there was something missing. |
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Most recently, using a framework in Java, I had problems with my code. I'd |
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expect it [to crash](/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it) 'cause I didn't handle |
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things. What actually happened is that the framework silently hid the error |
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and restarted the processing. To find out what was happening, I had to attach |
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a debugger and see what was wrong with the data; otherwise, I'd have no idea |
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about what's wrong. |
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Was a debugger necessary there? I don't think so. If the framework actually |
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displayed the error (crashed, put a wall of text on the logs, whatever), I |
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wouldn't need to use a debugger. But, because something was missing, I did, |
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in fact, was _forced_ to use a debugger. |
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Besides this, in the long run, you'd end up with problems in locations that |
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you can't attach a debugger -- for example, your production environment. You |
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_could_ but you _shouldn't_ do this. On the other hand, if you [log |
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events](/books/things-i-learnt/log-events), then you can see what was going |
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on, without a debugger. |
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Again, I'm not taking the merits of debuggers, but in the long run, they are |
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mostly useless and actually point missing surrounding support to actually |
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understand what's going on. |
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{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/understand-shortcuts", prev_chapter_title="Shortcuts Are Nice, But Only In The Short Run", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/integration-tests", next_chapter_title="Unit Tests Are Good, Integration Tests Are Gooder") }} |
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