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From: David Hanley <david@nospan.netright.com>
Subject: Re: Any research putting c above ada?
Date: 1997/04/18
Message-ID: <3357C6C5.27F@nospan.netright.com>#1/1
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Reply-To: david@nospam.netright.com
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.c,comp.lang.ada
Date: 1997-04-18T00:00:00+00:00
List-Id: <comp.lang.ada>


Dave Wood wrote:
>  I recall listening a few years ago
> to a learned fellow (ironically enough, one of the "big names" in
> the Ada community) describing that debuggers were a Bad Thing and
> should never be used, because they lead programmers to laziness and
> complacency.  A proper programmer, he argued, would not make mistakes
> where a debugger would be needed.
> 
> While interesting in an academic context (the exact context where
> the argument was made, actually), I find the idea absurd in any
> practical sense, and I have to think nearly everyone out there
> would agree.

	I also think that debuggers are bad, but not that hey should 'never'
use used.  I think that they are hardly ever necessary if the code is
properly designed.  Either the bug will not occur, or it will obviously
be in module 'x'  function 'y' because of the resultant incorrect
behaviour.

	You mileage may vary, of course.  

>  Any tool that helps me to locate, identify, and
> eliminate errors, so that I can spend more time focusing on the
> problem space rather than the implementation, is a tool I want in
> my arsenal.  This would be true regardless of the programming
> language involved.

	True.  My objection is that many programmers use the debugger to watch
what their code is doing as a replacement for understanding it.  

	dave