Spend less time chasing bugs and more time shipping value.
Imagine if as you work on developing the software, you’re always working in a state where everything was worked a minute ago. Nothing has been broken for an extended amount of time. Because the development loop is so small and rapid, and always giving you feedback that you’re hardly ever in a situation where you need to start up debugging tools.
Failures and bugs introduced within the last minute are going to be trivial to identify and fix, often making the debugger overkill.
If the developers have memorized debugger hot keys and using them regularly day after day to step through the code, then that’s a signal that they’re spending a lot of time fixing bugs. And that’s not a skill to glorify.
Developers that follow Test-Driven seldom live in the debugger because their practices keep bugs rare and small. Dealing with bugs in the day-to-day development lifecycle should be an anomaly, not the norm.
Discussions for your team
- Does our team practice using the debugger first, or writing a failing test first?
- Does our culture praise and reward prevention over heroic debugging?