Yeah, GDB and Valgrind are heavily encouraged at the University of Michigan in both introductory and advanced classes. Talking to friends at other universities, it seems like most other places encourage it too.
edit: ddd also has a gdb prompt at the bottom, so you really don't lose much by using ddd over gdb unless you can't run an X server
I generally try to refrain from bringing up Emacs in threads that have nothing to do with it (since Emacs does everything) but I was pleasantly surprised by its gdb support and I have used it extensively in the past.