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Taking the Pain Out of Debugging With Live Programming

angry tapir writes "'Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place,' Brian Kernighan once wrote (adding: 'So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?') However, Sean McDirmid, a researcher at Microsoft, has been working to remove some of the pain from debugging. McDirmid, based at Microsoft Research Asia, has been studying ways of implementing usable live programming environments: a solution that is less intrusive than classical debuggers. The idea is to essentially provide a programming environment in which editing of code and the execution of code occur simultaneously — and in the same interface as code editing — with tools to track the state of variables in a more or less live manner."

4 of 254 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Visual Studio by DJ+Jones · · Score: 5, Funny

    Have you tried the new VS2012? They took a shotgun to the UI and the file menu is still screaming from the trauma.

  2. 1980 called... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
  3. Wow by LizardKing · · Score: 5, Funny

    They've reinvented Smalltalk. Let's party like it's 1980.

  4. Re:Greenspun's Tenth Rule by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1, Funny

    But if you're writing purely functional code, you can't have any output, because that would be a 'side effect'.

    Anyone who claims that deserves a swift kick to the monads.

    --
    SJW n. One who posts facts.