It's funny... I know we're all experienced developers and that
therefore all of our viewpoints have validity, but to me debugger > test
cases. I am really doubting you are going to have enough test cases to
cover all conceivable reasonable inputs.
This is not meant to be a barb, but, for example, do you have a
test-case that examines what happens if someone ns_returnredirects and
then doesn't do an ns_adp_abort before the end of the page? AOLServer
contains a programming language and an extensive API, MANY of the
commands have unexpected interactions that you don't even know about yet.
I learned a valuable lesson a few years ago. A co-worker of mine, whos
opinions I did and do respect, held opposite viewpoints as me on some
programming concepts. We didn't work together for a few years, and then
we did again, and BOTH of us had reversed our opinions and now were
equally fervent in the opposite direction. This was enlightening to me,
because it revealed that people can hold opposite viewpoints of you and
still be right. Yes, I was rather young when this happened ;)
Rusty
Dossy Shiobara wrote:
On 2006.09.06, Jeff Rogers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
There are 2 main places where I find a debugger helpful. One is when I
make stupid mistakes (and if you don't occasionally make stupid mistakes
then I doubt you're actually programming) and the debugger can smack me
upside the head and point out the stupidity ("Oh, it's a fencepost
error!").
Automated tests should really eliminate this class of bugs, eliminating
the need for the debugger.
The other, more important case is when I am digging into code that I
am not familiar with.
Again, automated tests provide much more value here than a debugger. I
can look at code, "guess" as to what it's supposed to do, write an
automated test that asserts my understanding, and if it fails, then I
know my understanding was wrong. If it passes, then I understood that
piece correctly.
The upside here is once I've built up the tests, I can start to make
changes to the code and so long as I don't make any of the previous
tests fail, I know I've preserved the functionality that I've written
tests for.
Writing the tests once and being able to share and reuse them is worth
much, much more than one throw-away session in a debugger. The tests
will continue to provide value as long as they're relevant. The session
in the debugger only provides the user of the debugger insight (not the
whole team, who could read and run the tests).
Linus's rant really rubbed me the wrong way. I thought "considered
harmful" essays went out of vogue a few decades ago. If you'd rather
not use a particular tool fine, but don't imply that people who choose
to use it are somehow inferior.
I think Linus's rant was on-the-mark: if you feel the need for the
debugger, you're acknowledging a lack of sufficient understanding.
Linus's argument, as I understand it, says that "yes, a debugger is one
way of increasing your understanding, but not the best way, and
definitely not a way I personally intend to support in the Linux
kernel."
I thought there was code in AOLserver to support the TclPro debugger -
has that been removed?
Not that I'm aware of, but it also may not have been used or exercised
in a very long time. Or, if it has, I haven't heard of it.
-- Dossy
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