[Web Feed] Many people prefer print debugging over interactive debugging tools. Some of ...

..them seem to have concluded that the superiority of print debug



Many people prefer print debugging over interactive debugging tools. Some of them seem to have concluded that the superiority of print debugging is some kind of eternal natural law. It isn't: almost all the reasons people use print debugging can be overcome by improving debuggers — and to some extent already have been. (In the words of William Gibson, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed yet). The superiority of print debugging is _contingent_ and, for most developers, it will end at some point (or it has already ended and they don't know it.)

Record-and-replay debuggers like 
rr-project.org: rr (disclaimer: I initiated it and help maintain it), 
undo.io: Undo, 
docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/debugger/time-travel-debugging-overview: TTD, 
replay.io: replay.io, etc address one set of problems with interactive debuggers. You don't have to stop the program to debug it; you can record a complete run, and debug it later. You can record the program many times until it fails and debug only the execution that failed until you understand the failure. You can record the program running in a far-off machine, extract the recording and debug it wherever you want.




Link 1


Eyes Above The Waves: Print Debugging Should Go Away: https://robert.ocallahan.org/2021/04/print-debugging-should-go-away.html