DConf 2013 Day 3 Talk 1: Metaprogramming in the Real World by Don Clugston

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Thursday, June 13, 2013 21:39:17 Peter Alexander wrote:
> On Thursday, 13 June 2013 at 18:49:14 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> > On 6/13/2013 3:48 AM, Regan Heath wrote:
> >> What are the basic features you would require of a development
> >> environment,
> > 
> > People tell me that intellisense is the #1 feature.
> 
> The debugger is the #1 feature I'd miss from my day job if I
> didn't use Visual Studio. Feature wise, I'm sure gdb has most if
> not all VS has, but in VS everything is just there in front of
> you, easily usable (you don't need to consult the manual, or
> remember archaic commands). Using gdb vs. Visual Studio feels
> like trying to do web browsing via the command line.

The differences between a graphical debugger and gdb are fairly interesting in 
that all the basic stuff is just way easier and more pleasant in a graphical 
debugger, but gdb has all kinds of advanced stuff that tends to blow graphical 
debuggers out of the water in terms of power.

It would probably be best if the two could be properly combined so that all of 
stuff that does better graphically is done in a proper graphical debugger, but 
you have a command-line interface integrated into it for the more advanced 
stuff. You can at least sort of get that with some front-ends to gdb, but their 
graphical portion is never as good as it should be IMHO. Visual Studio 
definitely wins in that area.

- Jonathan M Davis