On 12/31/2010 12:51 PM, Cesare Di Mauro wrote:
2010/12/31  <skip@pobox.com>

   >> Another example. I can totally remove the variable i, just using the
   >> stack, so a debugger (or, in general, having the tracing enabled)
     >> cannot even find something to change about it.
   Ethan> -1

   Ethan> Debugging is challenging enough as it is -- why would you want to
   Ethan> make it even more difficult?

<snarky>
I don't know.  Maybe he wants his program to run faster.
 </snarky>

:D

"Aggressive" optimizations can be enabled with explicit options, in order to leave normal "debugger-prone" code.
I wish the Python compiler would adopt a strategy of being able to disable optimizations.  I wrote a bug about a "leaky abstraction" optimization messing up coverage testing 2.5 years ago, and it was closed as won't fix: http://bugs.python.org/issue2506.  The debate there centered around, "but that line isn't executed, because it's been optimized away."  It's common in sophisticated compilers (as in, any C compiler) to be able to choose whether you want optimizations for speed, or disabling optimizations for debugging and reasoning about the code.  Python would benefit from the same choice.

--Ned.
 
If you use print statements for the bulk of your debugging (many people do),
unrolling loops doesn't affect your debugging ability.

 Skip

It's a common practice. Also IDEs helps a lot, and advanced interactive shells too (such as DreamPie).

Cesare
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