Purposefully debugging without using a debugger?

Question

In chapter 5 of \"The Practice of Programming\" Brian Kernighan and Rob Pike write:

As a personal choice, we tend not to use debuggers beyond getting a st

Answer 1

My favorite feature of the Visual Studio Debugger is the Immediate Window. I'm not sure if this is provided in many other environments, but it is damn helpful sometimes.

A few examples of how:

• Data coming back from a database isn't casting correctly. Fire up the debugger and try a few casts until you get the right one (oops the int was short or the bool was a byte, etc),

• Web apps with nested controls (e.g. TemplateFields in a GridView)...I have a reference to a specific control but want to get the grid row that I'm in (or viceversa). I can code a few nested FindControls() and hope for the best, or I can just do it in the immediate window until I find the control that I want.

Every project I've worked on so far (only 1-2 years corporate experience), I've used the debugger/Immediate Window at least once or twice. It may just speak to my inexperience, but I find it's extremely helpful for getting a good understanding of what is happening in a complex system.