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Comment by tagrun | Hacker News Reader

And I find this expectation rather bizarre. Since when compiled programming languages ship a debugger?

You can use a world class debugger, known as gdb, with Go, and yes, they do provide extensions for gdb to make it understand high-level Go constructs (such as goroutines, maps, slices, channels, ...): https://golang.org/doc/gdb

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I feel like there's weird fud around gdb and go. It's worked for me just fine every time I've used it.

Looking at commercial compilers, since the mid-80's.

What you say has nothing to do with languages and it precedes 80s; Watcom, VC++ etc. comes with a debugger because the proprietary system they run on doesn't have one. GNU/Linux always had gdb.

So if you want me to spell it out, here you go: it's bizarre to expect a debugger from modern compiled languages which have been FOSS from the beginning.

That statement fails on the face of mainframes and commercial UNIX environments, which also have platform debuggers.

Also fails regarding other FOSS languages like Python, which have had a debugger since ever.

What fails? Some commercial C/C++ compiler producers invest into a debugger typically because some of their customers use it on a platform without a good built-in debugger. Yes, some systems had debuggers. The point is, some didn't.

I said compiled language, which Python isn't. Yes, gdb won't help you debugging scripting/VM languages.

Anyway, this is getting off topic, as we're talking about the alleged lack for debuggers for Go binaries for today's Go users, and neither of the things you mentioned are relevant. In my experience, nitpicking rarely leads to anything fruitful.

Those some commercial producers as you put it, have invested in debuggers for BASIC, Pascal, Modula-2, PL/S, PL/8, NEWP, C, C++ and Ada for IBM/360, VAX/VMS, IBM 400, Solaris, Aix, HP-UX, Tru64, Irix, by IBM, Unisys, DEC, Compaq, SGI and HP themselves.

And if I have to mention a FOSS compiled language instead of Python, with debugger support out of the box, then Oberon, Modula-2, FreeBasic, Gambas and FreePascal come to mind.

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