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

[Chan Ngo <chan.ngo2203@gmail.com>]

On 11/25/2015 04:27 PM, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> Am Mittwoch, den 25.11.2015, 08:23 -0500 schrieb Ivan Gotovchits:
>> The use of a debugger usually indicates that a programmer lost a
>> control of its own program and has no idea whats going on.
>> If a programmer doesn't own a program, and tries to understand
>> existing program, written by someone else, then it means to me,
>> that the program is written so poorly, that it is too hard to recover
>> its semantics by reading its source code representation.
> That's a little bit too hard. Actually, I like one aspect of the
> debugger, namely that you can easily print deeply nested values. This is
> also very helpful for exploring a well-written existing program. (And it
> would even be more helpful if the debugger could look through
> abstractions.)
>
> Actually, I recently used that for writing unit tests for a complex
> algebraic transformation (developed by myself). Just create some input
> for the transformation, run it, fire up the debugger, and stop the test
> at the point where the transformation call returns. Then check whether
> you like the result by printing it in the debugger, and if so, develop a
> check that matches against the expected pattern. (You could also do this
> with the toploop, but using the debugger is easier when you have a
> closed executable.)
>
> That said, I also prefer the printf method for debugging program flow
> issues.
Now, for OCaml development, I often use the printing method than 
ocamldebuger.

I hope that some IDE can support debugging OCaml programs in near future.

Chan
>
> Gerd