Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

> I can wrap my head around how memory works, but gdb just feels... hard to use

I really like it. I find it simple in the same way I find C a simple language. There isn't that many commands that you use frequently and the names are quite intuitive and can be shortened to a single letter if there are no conflicts. Now, on Windows, WinDbg I never really groked. I found it hard to use.



I would not call gdb or for that matter, most GNU tools, as 'simple'.


I've forgotten who this was (someone in the Rust community?), but I recently heard someone describe GNU tools as simple to use and hard to learn. I'm still in the learning phase, but it makes sense to me.


Assembly itself is pretty simple, but hard to use.


That's a good point. However, it's arguably only hard to use to do modern software development which is a complex use case for a low level language. At least in all my time doing C (>10yrs) I can reduce most of my gdb usage to analyzing core dumps by doing a few simple things: print backtraces per thread, moving up/down the stack and printing variable values. The rare situations I've used it for 'stepping' through code, is also just a few commands. The code itself is where the complexity is at that point that gdb itself is the least of my concerns.


i would ;)




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: