IDE

[John Reimer]

In article <dtp0m9$5gl$1 at digitaldaemon.com>, Sean Kelly says...
>
>Georg Wrede wrote:
>> 
>> Now, D is IMHO an excellent First Language. And some people really seem 
>> to find debuggers useful. Personally I never use them, because I find 
>> myself distracted and concentrating on the debugger instead of thinking 
>> of the problem.
>> 
>> With D, let folks have debuggers if they want. But to become a real 
>> programmer, one should learn to bike without the baby wheels.
>
>Debuggers become quite useful in team environments where you didn't 
>necessarily write a lot of the code in the program.  Particularly if 
>it's an old program where DBC and similar approaches simply aren't 
>feasible because the app was designed with the expectation that invalid 
>parameters should be swallowed.  Sure I could still work out in my head 
>how the thing is working, but if the system is alreadying held together 
>by spit and bubblegum it may take quite a while to accomplish.  I think 
>Linus' comments are valid for some portion of the software community, 
>but not necessarily all of it.
>
>
>Sean


I agree, Sean.  But looking over the article again, I have to observe that Linus
was quite specific about his opinion as it applied to /kernel/ debuggers.  He
doesn't seem to have given an opinion on the use of debuggers in general.  Thus,
I may have overeacted about his opinion, though I still disliked his manner (I
haven't the experience to counter his opinion about kernel debuggers).

The generalization occured as a result of Georg Wrede's post in which he took
Linus opinion and expanded it into a distaste for debuggers in general.

-JJR