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I don't 'rely' on a debugger per se, but it's an important tool in my arsenal.

When I know that memory corruption is occurring (I work in embedded C++), a debugger with watchpoints is about the only way to track down who has that stray pointer.

Sure, a debugger isn't an excuse for not thinking about what you're doing, but banning them outright is a ridiculous idea.

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I never said to ban them. I think my wording was really badly chosen. By "rely" I mean people (and I've seen this on numerous occasions) who write code without a plan and then use the debugger to adjust it till it's working, instead of thinking about the code and then using the bugger to fix misconceptions about the own or foreign code.

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