# How do you use debuggers?

**URL:** <https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-use-debuggers/4580>\
**Category:** Community\
**Created:** [July 1, 2017, 6:41am UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-use-debuggers/4580 "2017-07-01T06:41:52Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 10

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**Author:** ![juliohm](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/julialang/user_avatar/discourse.julialang.org/juliohm/32/215266_2.png) [@juliohm](https://discourse.julialang.org/u/juliohm)\
**Post date:** [July 1, 2017, 3:04pm UTC](https://discourse.julialang.org/t/how-do-you-use-debuggers/4580/10 "2017-07-01T15:04:28Z")

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I am pretty much with you @jtravs, I am coming from C++ and plain terminals. The gdb debugger was my last resource when I couldn’t figure out the issue by just reasoning through the code and printing out intermediate values of computation.

After you do this exercise for a while, you learn how to find bugs systematically and efficiently. You become a better programmer as well. In fact, if you have the habit of writing tests for every feature you add to your library, a debugger is almost useless.

I think you are right that people are used to jump straight to a Visual Studio or MATLAB debugger, and are somewhat dependent on a tool that should be used on exceptional cases only.

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