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in reply to Re: Are debuggers good?
in thread How to debug unknown dynamic code?

I wonder if a lot of your opinion stems from the kind of coding that you do merlyn. Seems to me that you're lucky enough to be able to work on your own code most of the time. And would it fair to say that most of the programs that you write are small demos of particular Perl features for training courses or articles?

If I was writing programs under those conditions, I don't think I'd have very much use for the debugger either. Unfortunately, I don't work like that. I spend three or six months on a client's site and the first thing they invariably do is throw a piece of the most horrible Perl you've ever seen at me and ask me to either fix or enhance it. In cases like these I find that running the code through the debugger is an invaluable way to get an in-depth look at exactly how the progrma works.

I think that not enough people use the debugger. I think that this is often because Perl programming is seen as 'scripting' and not important enough to justify that level of work. I further think that this point of view is completely wrong, but that it explains a lot of the very dodgy Perl code that you can find out there.

--
<http://www.dave.org.uk>

"Perl makes the fun jobs fun
and the boring jobs bearable" - me