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A Debugger is a REPL is a Debugger

I love debuggers! The last time I used a debugger seriously was in 2017 or so, when I was still coding in Kotlin. I've since switched to working with native code, and, sadly gdb and lldb are of almost no help for me. This is because they are mere debuggers, but what I need is a REPL, and a debugger, all in one. In this article I show a more productive way to use debuggers as REPLS.

I’ve since switched to working with native code, and, sadly gdb and lldb are ofalmost no help for me. Thistwo features completely change how I used debuggers — instead of stepping through my program andobserving it, I zap between interesting points of its execution and run experiments. You need to beable to place yourself “in the middle” of your application, where you have access to all the locals.Debuggers do this via setting breakpoints, but the click-on-the-fringe (or, worse, enter file:line:column textually) UI is atrocious.

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