Me Too. Of course, I’d also like a way to observe particles without letting them be affected by the observation…

Seriously, though, I also think you’re being too harsh on logging, although having said that, it was only two days ago that I tried to pinpoint a particularly nasty crasher and — et voila — adding logging made the problem nonreproducible. And now my luxuriously full head of hair is now a mere shadow of its once glory.

I like the hospital analogy; we spent a little too much time in hospitals a year ago, and it actually added to my frustration to realize that the medical professionals were just debugging, since it completely demystified the medical aura of authority for me, and I started thinking about them as irritating coders trying to pass off a particularly troublesome problem with stock answers.

For those problems, I generally prefer targetted logging over any debugger built by man.

What I really want is a general purpose trace system that has no effect on timing and will allow me to replay the exact execution of the app over and over again backwards and forwards.

On the bright side, having to reboot every time you write to address 0×000000 will cure you forever of failing to check for null pointers.

> “If architects built buildings the way programmers wrote programs,
> the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.”

Yeah, but nobody asks architects to build buildings in 2 weeks from a crayon drawing of a house. (Stop me before I drag the analogy out further.)

Jonathan said:
> Another right way: start explaining the bug
> to someone who knows nothing whatsoever about
> the code, and ideally nothing about programming
> at all.

Amen. Long walks, hot showers, and doing the dishes are also good for bubbling those insights to the top. (Plus, you get cleaner dishes and cleaner programmers.)

My worst bugs are usually GUI bugs. Specifically, I have yet to find a debugger or debugging approach that makes it significantly easier to deal with Swing doing unexpected things. Automated testing doesn’t apply well to GUIs either, at least not in any affordable package that I’ve found.

Yeah, but nobody asks architects to build buildings in 2 weeks from a crayon drawing of a house.

Jonathan said:
Another right way: start explaining the bug to someone who knows nothing whatsoever about the code, and ideally nothing about programming at all.

Amen. Long walks, hot showers, and doing the dishes are also good for bubbling those insights to the top. (Plus, you get cleaner dishes and cleaner programmers.)

My worst bugs are usually GUI bugs. Specifically, I have yet to find a debugger or debugging approach that makes it significantly easier to deal with Swing doing unexpected things. Automated testing doesn’t apply well to GUIs either, at least not in any affordable package that I’ve found.

Another wrong way: use GDB.

Another right way: start explaining the bug to someone who knows nothing whatsoever about the code, and ideally nothing about programming at all. Half the time you’ll blather on for ten minutes, and then stop and slap your head in disgust at missing the blindingly obvious. Spouse/significant others/main squeezes are particularly good for this. Some claim it also works with cats, but I’ve never got one to feign interest for long enough.