I find this also. Though I don't have it down to a habit yet. I may write test or code first. I also find testing to eliminate much debugging effort. I usually have an editor on the test file and the code file, write a little, test a little, and vice versa. If I know where I'm going I'm apt to write the test first. When I'm in cut and fit mode, writing tests first seems inefficient.

I went through that stage too, but I now test first for everything. It really made a difference to my code quality. Give it a try for a couple of weeks. You'll like it (why do I feel like a pusher :-)

When writing new code I always have three windows open. One for my test script. One for my module. One for my test output.

I've a little script that runs my tests every time I change a file, so I just spend my development time switching between the test window and the code window. Write test. Hit save. Watch test fail. Write code. Hit save. Watch test pass. Warm fuzzies. Repeat until done. Fun.

It is more flexible to use bitfields instead of additive levels.

True. However I find if I need that level of flexibility for debug statements it's a sign that:

More and more, I lean towards leaving in all the debugging code. If I wanted to check warn "foo is $foo"; why wouldn't I want to leave that pointer for the next reader. There are times that the code is changed and a debug statement becomes superfluous. But in general it is like marking a trail for the next person.

I personally don't find that's true. If the statements are there for debugging purposes (as opposed to logging) I find that they just clutter up the code. If the next person needs the debug statements to understand the code I would start thinking about refactoring the code to make it clearer.

Something else I do more now is use things like Hook::LexWrap to add instrumentation so I don't have to alter the original code at all!

In reply to Re^3: Instrumenting code for debugging. by adrianh
in thread Instrumenting code for debugging. by rir

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.