Hacker News Reader

Comment by great_psy | Hacker News Reader

Did anyone use this for an actual project. I am wondering how those chatX applications actually help.

When I had to use a dissasembler the issue was not commands, because those become muscle memory after a few hours of use. (LLM solutions are anti muscle memory because for the same prompt you can get diff results)

The issue I had was wrapping my brain around what is actually going on, keeping track of pointers, addresses and so on.

Maybe this chat solution can help with some of that, but I often am not sure what I actually am looking for so I can’t ask for it. Until I gets to “fix the bug/ find the overflow” I just don’t see the extra value.

View on HN

I use gbd so rarely that I often forget the commands between sessions. Then I use print debugging when it’s not the best tool just because I don’t want to lookup the commands. I could see the use for this kind of thing.

Same problem when coding shell scripts. It’s like they tried to invent the hardest to remember language. I often use python instead of bash just because I can remember it and read it.

I use GDB all the time… but never directly, always through an IDE’s debugging abilities. So I can’t see any use to tools like this one? Dunno maybe I’m missing something and lots use it directly, but IDE integration is what makes it super useful for JTAG debugging of firmware at work for me.

I do embedded development, so I’m usually attaching a gdb session to the server spawned by this esoteric chip’s programmer/debugger. I could possibly make use of this I suppose.

I think I’m reasonably spoiled by ESP-IDF and the STM32 toolchains integrations into VSCode; aside from launching OpenOCD myself I never have to manage GDB directly

> When I had to use a dissasembler the issue was not commands, because those become muscle memory after a few hours of use.

My few hours of usage is 30 different 5 minute stints over the course of 6 months. I don't remember anything between usages. English debugger prompts will be amazing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com