Why does nobody talk about how much time you waste not using a debugger?

I was working on a small Python script for a class project and spent like two hours just adding print statements everywhere to see where my code broke. My friend saw me and said, 'Dude, just run it in the debugger, it shows you the line.' I tried it in VS Code and it showed me the exact variable that was wrong in about five seconds. I felt so dumb for not learning that basic tool first. Has anyone else had a moment like that where a simple tool saved you a ton of headache?

3 comments

3 Comments

oliverhernandez16d ago

Doubt it's that big a deal, since print statements still teach you how the code flows. Like fiona_west21 said, there's probably a reason some teachers make you do it the hard way first. It's just a different way to learn.

miles_burns17d ago

My first internship had me manually tracing logs for three days before a senior dev showed me the debugger. It felt like learning to read all over again.

fiona_west2117d ago

Did they at least explain why they wanted you to trace logs manually first? Seems like a weird way to learn the system.