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0 pointspavel_lishin15y ago0 comments

Pick any "how do you debug?" submission anywhere, and you'll see a lot of people claiming that using printf, etc, is retarded in the age of good debuggers.

Maybe they're just a noisy minority.

0 comments

SoftwareMaven15y ago

Using printf to debug when you could use a good debugger is...well, I wouldn't say stupid, just highly unproductive.

The problem is there are a lot of problems that aren't debugger friendly, especially if you are new to a particular domain. The kernel, timing-related problems, remote systems, production systems (you have intelligent logging, right?), etc., all have extremely valid reasons for using printf debugging.

kahawe15y ago

One thing I am missing or haven't found in some of the debuggers I have used (mostly Java) is the feature to just print out the code execution and return values for a certain part of or the whole code.

Those prints or printfs are great to get a quick overview of what's going on, if you ask me... instead of stepping through the whole thing.

branden15y ago

printf debugging is too simple and intuitive to justify an entire blog post. ;)

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