I Am a Puts Debuggerer

I have a different background than the author. I did take the time to learn the debugger, for multiple IDEs, and I've spent a *lot* of time in that rabbit hole. Not to discourage those using a debugger but it really was, for me, a hole.

I could spend hours in there feeling productive, and then a few more hours not feeling productive. And after the journey I didn't feel like I knew the code better than before - at least not compared to the time spent.

Now I'm a println debugger and I think more about where I'm putting statements, which helps me understand the code at a higher level.

I even have a trick that aids this technique a ton. I have a snippet for print line statements that adds "// FIXME: (ABC) testing" to all lines, with ABC here being my initials. Then a git pre-commit hook which won't let me commit that code. Also searching the codebase for that string shows all of my breadcrumbs, like individual breakpoints at all the places I care about.

Ever since I started using visual studio, I never puts debug ever again. autos pane shows you any local variables value.

Why mess around typing and backspacing print calls?

Not to mention condition breakpoints, changing values at runtime, don’t even need to touch your code.