Re: [Caml-list] Do you use a debugger with OCaml? If not, why not?

["Michael Grünewald" <michipili@gmail.com>]

> On 25 Nov 2015, at 17:16, Anton Bachin <antonbachin@yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> I always use prints and never debuggers when I have access to the
> source, in any language. I use debuggers when reverse-engineering
> binaries, however. As for why – setting up breakpoints, trying to
> examine values usually takes more time for me than adding some
> prints and reading and understanding the resulting trace. Perhaps
> it only seems that way, but that has been my habit for a very long
> time.

While OCaml has an incredibly powerful debugger, I rarely use it. In
most situation, I can analyse code to make an hypothesis that I can
turn into an automatic test case.  Time spent writing tests is in
my opinion much better invested than time spent debugging, because
the investment is reflected by a code artefact that adds value to
the project, in the form of confidence about results.

Sometimes, problems observed do not have any obvious plausible cause,
so that stepping through the code is one of the best options.

Instead of print-peppering, I prefer to use structured failures
(like the success monad https://github.com/michipili/lemonade)
giving context for the failure, or improved logging capacities.

This is not really related to debugging, but let me add that I tend
to use the toplevel loop, either for experimenting or to interactively
solve complex (to me) typing problems that I cannot do right away.

Best,
Michael