I rarely use a debugger. The experience is just awful in almost every debugger I've used.
For low level code where you really want to see all the program/function state evolving over time, they can be useful.
Your Java program throws some random NullPointerException? Prints, and lots of them. The experience with the debugger is miserable. I set a breakpoint somewhere, then do I jump or step or whatever? Who knows, all I know is whichever I pick is the wrong one everytime.
I saw another poster mention a debugger that lets you put breakpoints that print stuff. Now that would make me use a debugger all the time. Maybe the debuggers I have used already support that, I certainly wouldn't know if they do, they didn't make it discoverable.
For low level code where you really want to see all the program/function state evolving over time, they can be useful.
Your Java program throws some random NullPointerException? Prints, and lots of them. The experience with the debugger is miserable. I set a breakpoint somewhere, then do I jump or step or whatever? Who knows, all I know is whichever I pick is the wrong one everytime.
I saw another poster mention a debugger that lets you put breakpoints that print stuff. Now that would make me use a debugger all the time. Maybe the debuggers I have used already support that, I certainly wouldn't know if they do, they didn't make it discoverable.