[bow_]

I used to do print debugging a lot. And then I tried using the `breakpoint()` call available since Python 3.7[1], and now I can't imagine doing any serious debugging without PDB (or any other debugger).

(I mentioned Python, since this is linking to the Python-flavor of Icecream).

Sure, there are still times when just calling print() is sufficient. But they are becoming less frequent. `print()` is only shorter than `breakpoint()` by just 5 - len(variable_name_to_print) characters after all.

I know `import pdb; pdb.set_trace()` was available before, though `breakpoint()` is just a lot simpler, among others for the reasons they mentioned in the PEP.

There is also the `--pdb` flag in pytest[2], that lets me jump into a PDB session upon test failure.

All of this makes me think, what are the cases where print-level debugging is the better option in Python, compared to using an actual debugger?

[1] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0553/

[2] https://docs.pytest.org/en/latest/usage.html#using-the-built...

[herge]

And if you really spend a lot of time in a python debugger, pudb (https://pypi.org/project/pudb/) is a lot of fun. It includes a full curses debugger, it saves breakpoints between runs, can run any interpreter (ipython, bpython, ...) you want, etc.

And since it's console only, you can even run it remotely without too much hassle.

[StavrosK]

If you're at a tty, PuDB is the best. For everything else, there's icecream.