[plt-scheme] ATTN: Neil Van Dyke (and some philosophical musings on debuggers)

From: Shriram Krishnamurthi (sk at cs.brown.edu)
Date: Wed Sep 15 14:59:26 EDT 2004

Eric M. Kidd wrote:

> On the flip side, do debuggers make programmers sloppy?  I know lots
> of Scheme and LISP people who think so, and Linus Torvalds seems to
> agree.

The problem with any discussion about "debugging" is that each person
is either shooting at or firing from behind their own peculiar
definition of that word, and often the definitions don't agree.

At its very root, I think the claim that debuggers make programmers
sloppy would be akin to arguing that endoscopy must make surgeons
sloppy.  (Obviously ridiculous.)  The problem is in the details: the
training, the extent of use, the diversity of other tools employed,
and so on.

Shriram


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