Debugging in textual languages

[jacemdom]

My work has been requiring me to do more and more development in visual studio. Every time I switch back to LV I get a feeling of being able to really see what is happening to my data while developing due to the required front panel automatically built when defining the "variables" inputs outputs of the sub. This panel also allows to quickly and easily add more controls to see the data in different ways.

The question is this. Is that feeling shared by others and if not what techniques, tools, add-ons or whatever are used to make textual development as easy as LabVIEW graphical dataflow paradigm.

My own opinion is that textual languages will never be even close to offering anything remotely close to LV. Of course that being said I have no choice to use visual studio so every time I go back to LV and feel like this and question myself, hoping that maybe, I have overlooked some crucial technique or tool to stop feeling so blind in visual studio.

[altenbach]

I just love LabVIEW debugging. It's like open brain surgery. 😄

[Albert.Geven]

Hi Jacendom

It is true, each frontpanel is also a testing vi for what is done in code.

It has never been so easy to test a subroutine as in LabVIEW.

one of the reasons I still love it.

[MichaelBalzer]

This blog over on MSDN covers a range of techniques for monitoring data while debugging in Visual Studio. I normally use the DataTip for quickly peeking at values, or setup some watch windows for data I want to monitor while the application is running.

[AristosQueue (NI)]

Open the Autos pane (while running, Debug >> Windows >> Autos) for the closest thing (to the best of my knowledge) to execution highlighting to see all the wire values as you step. If you're debugging a release-optimized process, it'll give you an idea of what variables you can look at and which ones are lost to compiler optimization.

[alexderjuengere]

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@jacemdom wrote:

The question is this. Is that feeling shared by others and if not what techniques, tools, add-ons or whatever are used to make textual development as easy as LabVIEW graphical dataflow paradigm.

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If I had to use textual languages more frequently, I would want to learn how to write code for plotting simple graphs from within programs to quickly visualize intermediate result 1d or 2d array data

[jacemdom]

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@alexderjuengere wrote:

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If I had to use textual languages more frequently, I would want to learn how to write code for plotting simple graphs from within programs to quickly visualize intermediate result 1d or 2d array data

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That is a real pain in the ass...looking at arrays...always finding myself building code to check the data...

[RTSLVU]

My first computer was a T/S-1000 (The US version of the Sinclair ZX81) 

Granted it was only running BASIC, but in debug mode it would highlight the lines of code as they were executed, sort of like "Highlight Execution" in LabVIEW. I don't think it updated variables with live values, but you could see where you program was hanging up.

Also syntax was checked as you entered every line and it would not accept a line with a syntax error. I was very spoiled by this feature as I am a horrible speller and missed it dearly after moving on to other computers and text based languages..