How Would You Improve Today's Debugging Tools?

redelvis asks: "I recently came across an article by MIT's Media Lab on 'The Debugging Scandal and What to Do About It'. It's a few years old now, but it really got me thinking about how little the debugging process has improved over the last 5,10 or even 30 years. I have developed applications using modern IDE debuggers such as Borland's JBuilder, Microsoft's Visual C++, as well as standard tools like gdb and jdb. Despite the slick graphical interfaces, nice thread stack traces and local variable browsers, I still make sure I have on hand plenty of notepads, graph paper, pens and pencils so I can try to build up a picture of what state the program is in and to help me play detective in pinpointing what is going wrong with my (or other peoples) programs. Do other developers have similar problems? Do they find modern IDEs and debuggers have shortcomings in helping track down bugs? What would make a better debugger? Why do you think so much effort been invested in areas such as advanced modelling tools but so little in improving debugging tools?"

Comments

Re:VB has one of those debuggers

[cowbird]

The attitude is easy to explain: VB sucks ass.

Extreme Programming Helps

[bruceFinding]

I have found Extreme Programming techniques to be very useful. I do much less debugging now, because I write unit tests as (or even before!) I write the methods. I use the JUnit framework for all the Java code that I develop.

I'm sure that debugging technology can and should be improved, but I think that better development methodology reduces the need for debugging.