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I feel like many of the commenters here haven't experienced enough corporate environments. I love using a debugger for open-source projects I work on and web apps I used to do for clients, but when you're working for a big company it's usually difficult to impossible to attach a debugger. Almost all of them have such convoluted setups that you'd need to use remote debugging, which is difficult to configure. You can barely use your own IDE in some of the FAANGs. This was the catalyst that made me develop PySnooper.



The reason debuggers are often hard to use in these environments is because people who don't routinely use debuggers to do their job do not see the value of them, and so organizations do not prioritize your ability to do this. The tone of the comments here in general is sceptical of the use of debuggers and this is exactly why you can't use them in some FAANG's - it's not a popular belief even though to anyone who does use them routinely this is such a fundamental thing. I feel like I am so much more capable with the ability to use a debugger and to routinely use it by default during development. This is how vim users must feel explaining to all the sublime text and vscode users what they are missing out on. When you have it, it's a productivity superpower.


I use vim but I don't think it's a superpower and it's rare for me to need its advanced features. I doubt vim is giving me any edge over $other_editor, I just happen to find it ergonomic and a good fit for me. Maybe I don't use it well enough?

Likewise, I don't feel debuggers are a superpower. It's rare for them to "save the day". It's just a tool that I sometimes go for. The last time I remember using a debugger was a few months ago to figure out a memory leak. hexdump would've worked just as well.


I worked for Facebook and Amazon and used a debugger at both places regularly, on several layers of the stack.




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