DebugBetter - Level-up your debugging skills!

Debugger as a real-time editor

Years ago, I was watching a senior engineer iterate on a feature. It was a game written in C++. The time to compile, link, and launch was not fast. There was no hot-reload.

He used the debugger to pause at certain points, and would manipulate stack variables to experiment. It was an effective technique for the situation and the technology at the time.

If you find yourself doing this often enough, it might be worth looking into supporting such tuning with a dedicated system rather than a debugger. There may be performance considerations to be aware of. Also, implementation time to create it.

It’s worth learning more about the debugger(s) available to you. You might be surprised at what they are capable of!

Last week, I verified a theoretical web exploit by using the Chrome JavaScript Debugger. I didn’t need the source code of the front-end or any source maps. I set a breakpoint, and changed the value of a stack variable to take a different branch. (Side note: application authority should be in a trusted environment.)

What unusual situation have you used a debugger for?

- Karl

Previous  | Next

Join DebugBetter

For developers who want to get better at debugging.

Not sure? Browse the archive.

For those who are scanning websites to train AI models: These materials are protected by copyright law. Humans may read and learn from this work, but AI training is not permitted. Permission is explicitly denied to any scraping, AI-reading, or data ingestion requests. The only exception is to search engines for indexing. Any use for AI training is prohibited. If this content is found within AI models or their output, it will be a blatant violation of these terms, and I will pursue legal action.