Agree about automated testing, but never thought of it as a substitute for a debugger. I'm sure I've used ipdb to debug new pytest unit tests. I'm bought in on automated testing, used to work in the semiconductor industry where mistakes are very expensive. Still some clients refuse to pay for them. At least so far...
I started to write a long-winded reply to this and realized I was rambling. Specifically, I don't think of a debugger as a substitute for testing, case in point is your comment about using a debugger to find unexpected issues with unit tests. I think debuggers serve a specific and related purpose to tests, which is to shorten the feedback loop used to validate the expected, specific behavior of code.
I do think that the way debuggers are typically used is as a substitute for testing.
I feel you on the semiconductor testing. Many (many) years ago I worked for a company called Pintail Technologies as the test automation guy. They company specialized in using statistical techniques to sample test chips and it was stunning how expensive a process testing chips was at a hardware level and how manufacturers would do anything to drop the cost.
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Agree about automated testing, but never thought of it as a substitute for a debugger. I'm sure I've used ipdb to debug new pytest unit tests. I'm bought in on automated testing, used to work in the semiconductor industry where mistakes are very expensive. Still some clients refuse to pay for them. At least so far...
I started to write a long-winded reply to this and realized I was rambling. Specifically, I don't think of a debugger as a substitute for testing, case in point is your comment about using a debugger to find unexpected issues with unit tests. I think debuggers serve a specific and related purpose to tests, which is to shorten the feedback loop used to validate the expected, specific behavior of code.
I do think that the way debuggers are typically used is as a substitute for testing.
I feel you on the semiconductor testing. Many (many) years ago I worked for a company called Pintail Technologies as the test automation guy. They company specialized in using statistical techniques to sample test chips and it was stunning how expensive a process testing chips was at a hardware level and how manufacturers would do anything to drop the cost.