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> you'd have to spam debug printfs all around you expect this chain to happen to replace the debugger which would waste time

It's not wasting time, it's narrowing in on the things you know you need to look for and hiding everything else. With a debugger you have to do this step mentally every time you look at the debugger output.

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Trying to guess what that chain is and putting printf's all around that path feels like doing a poor simulation of what debugger can do out of the box and unlike us - precisely. So I'd say it's exactly the opposite.

If you only care about some specific spot, then sure - printf is enough, but you also need to recompile things every time you add a new one or change debug related details, while debugger can do it re-running things without recompilation. So if anything, printf method can take more time.

Also, in debugger you can reproduce printf using REPL.

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