How can you improve your debugging process with breakpoints?

One of the coolest option in breakpoint manage window is to add a condition based breakpoint. This helps greatly in case you want to debug a specific condition or iterating a large set of data. With this you don’t need to iterate the code line by line instead just run the app until that condition meets.

Using breakpoints has benefits but using them the right way is more important. Most of the developers do not know how to use breakpoints effectively and they slow down their development process. What to avoid - Too many breakpoints - Running the app in debug mode always Boost your debugging - Use debug at the right place - Learn about the debug menu (So that you can use the right tool while debugging) - Disable breakpoints when not needed - Evaluate variables to verify the values

Conditional Breakpoints Enhance precision by setting conditions for breakpoints. This allows the debugger to pause execution only when specific conditions are met, providing targeted insights into particular scenarios or code states.

While breakpoints are essential to debugging, and generally superior to debug logs in the right conditions (you are running locally, and can halt the application.) There are additional more proactive steps you can take to prevent the bugs in the first place. One is asserts. In high performance software such has video games, it can be beneficial to crash the app and dump the state when you enter an undefined or unsafe state. This is similar to the andon-chord in lean manufacturing. If everything stops, you’re forced to fix it before proceeding. Another approach is test driven development where you write unit tests to validate that your code moves through all control paths. This creates a controlled environment that can be automated.

Getting to know your debugger well can save you a great deal of time. For example when at a breakpoint, you may be able to modify variables in the code which might allow you to test a theory without having to go through a (potentially long) re-build time.

Adding watches to key variables during runtime can also improve your debugging process, instead of the classic step-by-step procedure.