Stuart Hacking

Here are two things about Eclipse which recently annoyed me. (I imagine it’s Eclipse’s fault, I guess It may be Java’s.)

1) When you reach an exceptional condition, the correct response in debug mode is to freeze the program and allow the developer a chance to inspect the current state. Stack, Heap, location, all that good stuff.

Throwing your arms in the air, screaming bloody murder and throwing away all the useful information when an error occurs is not useful. It turns debugging java into a game of “How close can you get to an error, without actually reaching the error.”

If you reach the error you lose the game, along with any useful data that might help you fix it.

2) You only seem to allow me to put breakpoints on lines on code. This implies that I already know where an error is. If I did, I’d probably fix it.

Why can’t you let me break on more useful things like when a particular variable has a particular value. This is similar to the previous point where I don’t want the program to drop everything and run away before I can look into it.

3) In 2010, the best way to debug a Java program is to pepper it with Print statements. This is sad.

Self error, fun, Programming, Rant