Re: Ok sorry, it is just a book gives no feedback.

[Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen)]

In article <9386t0$av0$1@nnrp1.deja.com>, Robert Dewar <robert_dewar@my-deja.com> writes:
> In article <aYmc6X7X+C3D@eisner.decus.org>,
>   Kilgallen@eisner.decus.org.nospam (Larry Kilgallen) wrote:
>> I supposed it might be annoying to some people, but I detest
>> that style of debugging.
> 
> Well I think a programmer should be able to use whatever tools
> are available.
> 
> Sounds like you would be totally stuck if you had no
> debugger available, and that would be unfortunate:-)

Yes, relying a debugger that does not exist is a bad idea.
Lacking a debugger would be something I would detest. For
non-embedded work, I would hope the portability of Ada
would let me debug on a machine with a good debugger (for
some meaning of "good") for most of the work.

> Sure, if the
> debugger can solve your problem fine, but there are definitely
> occasions on which the "put line" style of debugging is useful.
> 
> That's particularly true if the added debugging code is
> complex, and you have a debugger that does not allow for
> complex conditionals in breakpoints.

Are there many such debuggers still in use for major operating
systems ?  I remember something called ODT (Octal Debugging
Tool) for the PDP-8, but I think a lot of people do not even
remember the PDP-8.

To some extent I look at how far kernel mode debuggers have
progressed and figure that is indicative of the world at
large.  Sure, Alpha VMS has a kernel mode debugger giving
full symbolic support using a second machine.  But then I
have read about (but not used) the same thing for MacOS.
Unix fans are often touting the sophistication of their
tools.  So where are the weak debuggers ?