Re: [AOLSERVER] AOLserver's documentation woes and its future

[Rick Gutleber]

Although not relevant here, debuggers are practically mandatory when you are using a closed-source system.  Documentation being what it is (AOLServer is hardly the exception), sometimes it's the only way to know what's going on. As much as it would please, however, me to be able to step through Tcl code, I think Dossy is correct.  You really can live without one. 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 -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.