As I've never really worked very closely with debuggers, I've always worked on arriving at sane design and used print statements. It's been my experience that 99% of all problems that arise can be solved by one of these three methods:
1) print statements. Usually, you are assuming that a given variable has a certain value when it doesn't. (Yes, I know that examining memory within a debugger does this, but I feel that debuggers are usually overkill.)
2) Writing out the flow. You might be assuming that a function is called exactly n times, when it's really being called n+1 times. Or, that foo() is called before bar(). This contributes to sane design.
3) Adding anal checks. Are you doing @$foo? It might be useful to verify that ref($foo) eq 'ARRAY'. These sound stupid, but if you're writing something that a human will enter data for, you cannot be too careful. If a human can mess it up, a human will mess it up.

And, no, kids these days aren't less capable debuggers ... than we were when we were kids. I remember learning how to debug 8 years ago, when I was just getting into college. Just remember that a lot of the people with 2-4 years experience are only 19 or 20 years old. They're still kids.

In reply to Re: Are debugging skills atrophying? by satchboost
in thread Are debugging skills atrophying? by dws

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