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Seer: A GUI front end to GDB for Linux

(github.com)
376 points turrini | 1 comments | 15 Nov 24 12:36 UTC | HN request time: 0.198s | source
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rkharsan64 ◴[15 Nov 24 13:44 UTC] No.42146864[source]▶
On a general note, I would recommend any new (and experienced!) programmers to master the debugging tools of their ecosystem. I've seen countless experienced developers use printf-based debugging and waste hourse debugging something which could've been easily figured out by setting a breakpoint and stepping through your code. This is also a good way to understand code you're unfamiliar with.

This is one area where I believe a GUI tool is so much better: I can hover over variable names to view their values, expand and collapse parts of a nested structure, edit values easily, and follow execution in the same environment I write my code in.

Sure, it doesn't help much for some scenarios (one I've heard people mention is multithreaded code, where logs are better?), but for most people it's not that far from a superpower.

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1. mbrumlow ◴[15 Nov 24 16:30 UTC] No.42148413[source]▶
Idk. I feel like the second you need to use a debugger your code and design has become too complicated and needs to be rethought.

In general anything you would want to debug should probably be exposed as a unit test and the area of concern should have test cases made that trigger the behavior you are concerned about.

The entire process of debugging essentially results in the same process as you would need to do to create unit test. While it is faster it is lost once done, making the entire process one shot.