I use the dumper all the time, probably nearly every day at work. It's super-useful and simple to use. That doesn't mean I don't use the debugger. I break the debugger out about once a week, maybe more. Sometimes I use it as a REPL by invoking it with perl -de0 and sometimes I use it to actually debug a program. (The former is more common.) Like most debuggers, it's a little weird and takes a while to get used to using. It's an extremely useful tool, though, and you should know how to use it. There are currently two books on the debugger. ISBN 0596005032 is a decent little quick reference. I haven't gotten my review copy of ISBN 1590594541 yet, but I expect good things.
rjbs

In reply to Re: debugging - straw poll ... by rjbs
in thread debugging - straw poll ... by danmcb

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.