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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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.