[lpapez]

This article goes completely against my experience so far.

I teach at an internship program and the main problem with interns since 2023 has been their over reliance on AI tools. I feel like I have to teach them to stop using AI for everything and think through the problem so that they don't get stuck.

Meanwhile many of the seniors around me are stuck in their ways, refusing to adopt interactive debuggers to replace their printf() debug habits, let alone AI tooling...

[lordnacho]

> Meanwhile many of the seniors around me are stuck in their ways, refusing to adopt interactive debuggers to replace their printf() debug habits, let alone AI tooling...

When I was new to the business, I used interactive debugging a lot. The more experienced I got, the less I used it. printf() is surprisingly useful, especially if you upgrade it a little bit to a log-level aware framework. Then you can leave your debugging lines in the code and switch it on or off with loglevel = TRACE or INFO, something like that.

[shmerl]

I kind of had the opposite experience. I used to rely mostly on printfs and etc. but started using debugger more.

printf doesn't improve going up and down the call stacks in the debugger to analyze their chain (you'd have to spam debug printfs all around you expect this chain to happen to replace the debugger which would waste time). debugger is really powerful if you use it more than superficially.

[ambicapter]

> printf() is surprisingly useful, especially if you upgrade it a little bit to a log-level aware framework.

What do you mean by this? Do you mean using a logging framework instead of printf()?

[cbanek]

This is absolutely true. If anything, interactive debuggers are a crutch and actual logging is the real way of debugging. You really can't debug all sorts of things in an interactive debugger, things like timing issues, thread problems, and you certainly can't find the actual hard bugs that are in running services in production, you know, where the bugs actually happen and are found. Or on other people's machines that you can't just attach a debugger. You need good logging with a good logging library that doesn't affect performance too much when it's turned off, and those messages can also provide very useful context to what things are going on, many times as good if not better than a comment, because at least the log messages are compiled in and type checked, as opposed to comments, which can easily go stale.

[evertedsphere]

it can get even better

https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/tracing.html#i-dont-wa...

[VectorLock]

Interactive debuggers and printf() are both completely valid and have separate use-cases with some overlap. If you're trying to use, or trying to get people to use, exclusively one, you've got some things to think about.

[jennyholzer]

printf() users in this thread are very proud of their own ignorance

[marssaxman]

That's funny. I remember using interactive debuggers all the time back in the '90s, but it's been a long time since I've bothered. Logging, reading, and thinking is just... easier.

[TheRoque]

Really ? I find myself thinking the opposite. My program always runs in debug mode, and when there's some issue I put a breakpoint, trigger it, and boom I can check what is wrong. I don't need to stop the program, insert a new line to print what i _guess_ is wrong, restart the program from scratch etc.

Properly debugging my stack is probably one of the first things I setup because I find it way less tedious. Like, for example, if you have an issue in a huge Object or Array, will you actually print all the content, paste it somewhere else and search through the logs ? And by the way, most debuggers also have ability to setup a log points anyways, without having to restart your program. Genuinely curious to know how writing extra lines and having to restart makes things easier.

Of course I'm not saying that I never débug with logs, sometimes it's require or even more efficient, but it's often my second choice.

[globular-toast]

Yeah, I remember learning to use gdb when I was beginning in the early 2000s. I totally thought I was "levelling up" as a programmer and to be honest felt kinda badass with all those windows open in Emacs. But I've found that the number of times I actually resorted to using the debugger has been so small I don't remain fluent in it's use. What am I supposed to do? Write more bugs? On the other hand, I'm always ready to read, think and put in some print/log statements.

[jacquesm]

The right tool for the right job. If someone gets the job done with printf() then that would be good enough for me.

Interactive debuggers are a great way to waste a ton of time and get absolutely nowhere. They do have their uses but those are not all that common. The biggest usecase for me for GDB has been to inspect stacktraces, having a good mental model of the software you are working on is usually enough to tell you exactly what went wrong if you know where it went wrong.

Lots of people spend way too much time debugging code instead of thinking about it before writing.

Oh, and testing >> debugging.

[another_twist]

Nitpicking a bit here but theres nothing wrong with printf debugging. Its immensely helpful to debug concurrent programs where stopping one part would mess up the state and maybe even avoid the bug you were trying to reproduce.

As for tooling, I really love AI coding. My workflow is pasting interfaces in ChatGPT and then just copy pasting stuff back. I usually write the glue code by hand. I also define the test cases and have AI take over those laborious bits. I love solving problems and I genuinely hate typing :)

[Gigachad]

I've tried the interactive debuggers but I'm yet to find a situation where they worked better than just printing. I use an interactive console to test what stuff does, but inline in the app I've never had anything that printing wasn't the straightforward fast solution.

[gdubs]

I'm not above the old print here or there but the value of an interactive debugger is being able to step and inspect the state of variables at all the different call sites, for instance.

[davemp]

I’m only found them to be useful in gargantuan OOP piles where the context is really hard to keep in your head and getting to any given point in execution can take minutes. In those cases interactive debugging has been invaluable.

[quantiq]

Yeah, I'm not putting stock in this at all. The methodology of this survey seems dubious.

[jennyholzer]

30% of the articles on this forum are covert LLM advertising

[unconed]

The old fogeys don't rely on printf because they can't use a debugger, but because a debugger stops the entire program and requires you to go step by step.

Printf gives you an entire trace or log you can glance at, giving you a bird's eye view of entire processes.

[oblio]

Most decent debuggers have condițional breakpoints.