I'm at a "philosophical" crossroads. Recently, I changed jobs and noticed once again how some developers do what I call "Guess Oriented Development" where most of the time the person doesn't use any debbuging tools, but instead tries hard to spot the error from the code/db. I've come across people who were highly regarded inside the company but didn't know how to use a debugger! I noticed this with several different frameworks and in different companies.

Right now I work with a couple of guys who are not bad programmers, as far as I can tell from their code, but they asked me why I needed to see the error that the try...catch was throwing, like I was an alien from Jupiter. And when I asked how they would debug it, they said they rechecked the code.

Sure I can do that, and many times this is a good skill for finding more obscure problems, and as you get to know the applications better you will begin to guess the problems, but why would I struggle with something as simple as a SQL typo?

Am I being a "debbuger minion" or are these guys being "too hardcore"?

Over the course of my career, I've noticed that some developers don't use debugging tools, but do spot checking on erroneous code to figure out what the problem is.

While many times being able to quickly find errors in code without a debugger is a good skill to have, it seems it's less productive to spend a lot of time looking for issues when a debugger would easily find little mistakes like typos.

Is it possible to manage a complex without a debugger? Is it advisable? What benefits are there to be had by using "psychic debugging?"

I'm at a "philosophical" crossroads. Recently, I changed jobs and I noticed once again how some developers, do what I call "Guess Oriented Development" where most of the time the person doesn't use any debbuging tools, but instead tries hard to spot the error from the code/db. I've come across people who were highly regarded inside the company, but didn't know how to use a debbuger! I noticed this with several different frameworks and in different companies.

Right now I work with a couple of guys who are not bad programmers, as far as I can tell from their code, but they asked me why I needed to see the error that the try...catch was throwing, like I was an alien from Jupiter. And when I asked "how do you debug this", they said they rechecked the code.

Sure I can do that, and many times this is a good skill for finding more obscure problems, and as you get to know the applications better you will begin to "Guess" the problems, but why would I struggle a with something as simple as a SQL typo?

Am I being a "debbuger minion" or are these guys being "too hardcore"?

I'm at a "philosophical" crossroads. Recently, I changed jobs and noticed once again how some developers do what I call "Guess Oriented Development" where most of the time the person doesn't use any debbuging tools, but instead tries hard to spot the error from the code/db. I've come across people who were highly regarded inside the company but didn't know how to use a debugger! I noticed this with several different frameworks and in different companies.

Right now I work with a couple of guys who are not bad programmers, as far as I can tell from their code, but they asked me why I needed to see the error that the try...catch was throwing, like I was an alien from Jupiter. And when I asked how they would debug it, they said they rechecked the code.

Sure I can do that, and many times this is a good skill for finding more obscure problems, and as you get to know the applications better you will begin to guess the problems, but why would I struggle with something as simple as a SQL typo?

Am I being a "debbuger minion" or are these guys being "too hardcore"?