Why is debugging better in an IDE? [closed]

Answer 1

I haven't been developing for nearly 20 years, but I find that using a IDE / debugger I can :

• see all kinds of things I might not have thought to have included in a print statement
• step through code to see if it matches the path I thought it would take
• set variables to certain values to make code take certain branches

Answer 2

A problem with using print statements is it makes a mess of your code. IE, you have a function with 10 parts to it and you know it crashes somewhere, but you're not sure where. So you add in 10 extra print statements to pinpoint where the bug is. Once you've found and solved your bug, you now have to clean up by removing all of those print statements. Maybe you'll do that. Maybe you'll forget and it'll end up in production and your user's console will be full of debug prints.

Answer 3

Well another thing is that if you join a new old project and nobody really knows how the code is doing what it's doing, then you can't debug by echoing variables/objects/... b/c you have no idea what code is executed at all.

At my job I am facing exactly that kind of situation and visual XDebuging helps me getting an idea about what is going on and where, at all.

Best regards

Raffael

Answer 4

As alternative to debug in IDE you can try great Google Chrome extension PHP Console with php library that allows to:

• See errors & exception in Chrome JavaScript console & in notification popups.
• Dump any type variable.
• Execute PHP code remotely.
• Protect access by password.
• Group console logs by request.
• Jump to error file:line in your text editor.
• Copy error/debug data to clipboard (for testers).

Answer 5

One thing that I'm surprised I haven't seen in another answer is that the 2 debugging methods are not mutually exclusive.

printf debugging can work quite nicely even if you're using a standard debugger (whether IDE based or not). In particular with a logging framework so you can leave all or most of in the released product to help with diagnosing customer problems.

As noted in pretty much all the other answers here, the key nice thing about a standard debugger is that it allows you to more easily examine (and potentially change) the details of the program state. You don't have to know up front what you might want to look at - it's all available at your fingertips (more or less).

Answer 6

I personally feel the answer is as simple as "A integrated debugger/IDE gives you a wealth of different information quickly without the need for punching in commands. The information tends to be there in front of you without you haven't tell it what to show you.

The ease in which the information can be retrieved is what makes them better than just command-line debugging, or "printf" debugging.