"J-P. Rosen" <rosen@adalog.fr> wrote in message 
news:js032p$n1t$1@dont-email.me...
> Le 21/06/2012 23:00, Randy Brukardt a �crit :
>> The only time the debugger hassle is worth it is when the bug is
>> sufficiently low-level that you can't debug it at the Ada level (as when 
>> a
>> register has the wrong value for some reason, causing a hardware fault). 
>> And
>> that usually takes me many hours (usually an entire working day) for a
>> single problem, as opposed to dealing with a problem an hour or so at the
>> Ada level.
> Although I fully agree with you, I can add another use case where a
> debugger can be useful: when you enter an infinite loop and you don't
> have the foggiest idea where it is - assuming that ^C works, which is
> not always the case.

It rarely works usefully on Windows; you usually end up somewhere in the 
kernel and getting back to your program is iffy at best. I do my best to 
avoid writing infinite loops (this is arguably the most important value of 
the iterators in the containers libraries: you can't get an infinite loop 
from using them), but of course you can never be sure. I usually use 
incremental development in small enough steps that there are only one or two 
loops to look at for the problem - so usually the bug is obvious. When it's 
not, I just lose more hair...

                                   Randy.