That's a nice quote, but why does it have to be an either or? Sometimes you think about problems and sometimes you use debuggers. And sometimes you do both. I mean for something like C/C++ I just view a debugger as an interpreter. Also using print statements is just a less interactive version of a debugging process.

Personally I _love_ debuggers when coming to new codebases. I view code in the process of execution as the natural state of a codebase. Instead of hoping around through source code by hand, why not step into functions, continue execution, and let the program flow do it for you? Most code only has small parts that are important and with debuggers I can usually find those parts right away.

I don't blame Torvalds for not wanting to use a debugger. He doesn't like them and doesn't want to support them. That's his choice. But I find it odd to just categorically dismiss them.