[gambit-list] DrScheme and GambitC

Joel J. Adamson <adamsonj@email.unc.edu> adamsonj at email.unc.edu
Tue Sep 2 10:00:16 EDT 2008


>>>>> "Alex" == Alex Sandro Queiroz e Silva <asandroq at gmail.com> writes:

    Alex>  You say that nor quack neither gambit.el have a debugger, but
    Alex> the REPL *is* the debugger! You have backtraces, you can
    Alex> resume from an exception, you can see the environment of any
    Alex> frame etc. It's all there, it's not just behind shiny
    Alex> icons, it's in the REPL.

True.  In my quick tour of debuggers over the past week, I've often read
"Unfortunately this only works from the command-line," many times
(here's one: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7876).  How is that
unfortunate?

As Alex says, Lisp is the ultimate debugger anyway --- Lisp systems had
debuggers before Python, Ruby et al even existed.  Where do you think
they got the idea?  Lisp machines had source debuggers for the entire
operating system, and Emacs works on the same principle, with
interactive debuggers available.

Saying that a language is incomplete without an interactive debugger is
a little misleading: I've gotten a lot of use out of Scheme over the
past two years, and have only started using "real debuggers" (i.e. not
the REPL) in the past two weeks.

Joel

-- 
Joel J. Adamson
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
CB #3280, Coker Hall
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3280

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