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The Grug Brained Developer (2022)

(grugbrain.dev)
1087 points smartmic | 1 comments | 17 Jun 25 20:24 UTC | HN request time: 0.24s | source
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titanomachy ◴[17 Jun 25 23:45 UTC] No.44305194[source]▶
“Good debugger worth weight in shiny rocks, in fact also more”

I’ve spent time at small startups and on “elite” big tech teams, and I’m usually the only one on my team using a debugger. Almost everyone in the real world (at least in web tech) seems to do print statement debugging. I have tried and failed to get others interested in using my workflow.

I generally agree that it’s the best way to start understanding a system. Breaking on an interesting line of code during a test run and studying the call stack that got me there is infinitely easier than trying to run the code forwards in my head.

Young grugs: learning this skill is a minor superpower. Take the time to get it working on your codebase, if you can.

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1. fellatio ◴[18 Jun 25 08:43 UTC] No.44307933[source]▶
I thought debugging was table stakes. It isn't always the answer. If a lot is going on logs can be excellent (plus grep or an observability tool)

However debugging is an essential tool in the arsenal. If something is behaving oddly even the best REPL can't match debugging as a dev loop (maybe lisp excepted).

I even miss the ability to move the current execution point back in .NET now I use Go and JS. That is a killer feature. Edit and continue even more so!

Then next level is debugging unit tests. Saved me hours.