Don't debug -O3, or -O2 for that matter. Debug a separate debug build without optimizations, or don't heavily optimize your release build if you want to debug that (you know that obviously).

Even with optimizations disabled, debugging C++ can be quite painful. Only add a little template stuff to the source code, and a few "zero-cost" methods like indexing operators or cast operators, and it quickly becomes painful to step through code.

There should be a way to avoid stepping through boilerplate methods, but apart from specifying string patterns to exclude methods by name -- not inline with the method but in a separate debugging configuration (which is very very annoying).

The only solution I know is to use C++ features very lightly. Any other practical options?

Check this link and the twitter posts linked there, other well known developers have this issue: https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/std::move-and-...