This is an old argument, and the problem tends to be that each side reads the extreme position even when it was neither written nor intended.
I seldom use debuggers, but sometimes it's the right tool. Others I know and respect use debuggers much more. Even among people who are great at what they do, people work differently.
For those of us who prefer to use debuggers sparingly, the worst abuses stand out: coders wasting hours playing with breakpoint and stepping through code, eventually finding the point where it breaks, and then still not understanding the actual problem or how it should be fixed. This kind of situation is certainly not the case for good developers, but it's depressingly common. Good developers who use debuggers also see these abuses, but they respond with "you're doing it wrong" rather than "put away the debugger." IOW, anyone/everyone tends to correct someone by showing them how they do it.
I seldom use debuggers, but sometimes it's the right tool. Others I know and respect use debuggers much more. Even among people who are great at what they do, people work differently.
For those of us who prefer to use debuggers sparingly, the worst abuses stand out: coders wasting hours playing with breakpoint and stepping through code, eventually finding the point where it breaks, and then still not understanding the actual problem or how it should be fixed. This kind of situation is certainly not the case for good developers, but it's depressingly common. Good developers who use debuggers also see these abuses, but they respond with "you're doing it wrong" rather than "put away the debugger." IOW, anyone/everyone tends to correct someone by showing them how they do it.