> trying gdb, I asked myself if this is really what people use. The display constantly breaks and there's not a lot of stuff to quickly walk through code and visualize what it's doing

gdb has a tui that can show you multiple panes of information at a time, e.g. the source code, disassembly, and registers.

Other tools like Emacs, Eclipse, and CLion can use gdb as a backend and provide a friendlier interface on top.