Agreed. Since changing from C to Java several years ago I find that I never use debuggers anymore, relying instead on verbose logging to understand what my program is doing.
I think in C debuggers help more because you can abuse memory in various ways that you don't need to worry about so much in Java. With a debugger it is really easy to see yourself walk off the end of an array, for example.
I also observe that my peers who rely strictly on debuggers don't tend to do much logging. So when their software is in production they are mystified when it acts up. I also notice that they don't comment as verbosely either but I can't prove that's because they use a debugger. Maybe they wouldn't comment anyway.
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Agreed. Since changing from C to Java several years ago I find that I never use debuggers anymore, relying instead on verbose logging to understand what my program is doing. I think in C debuggers help more because you can abuse memory in various ways that you don't need to worry about so much in Java. With a debugger it is really easy to see yourself walk off the end of an array, for example. I also observe that my peers who rely strictly on debuggers don't tend to do much logging. So when their software is in production they are mystified when it acts up. I also notice that they don't comment as verbosely either but I can't prove that's because they use a debugger. Maybe they wouldn't comment anyway.