For me it was when I was making the CPP library. CPP for those that do not know is a library I made that allows Pharo to control a C++ application. Its a very simple IPC bridge using shared memory mapped files. I was surprised how easy it was to make it from the C++ side Pharo side was a different story. UFFI is brilliantly simple to use BUT, as much as the Pharo rocks for debugging Pharo code it works under one caveat. The caveat being that your code makes no usage of UFFI or any FFI. Because the Pharo debugger has no means to debug UFFI. People may not realize it but practically UFFI is C coding. It make look like your usual Pharo code but make no mistake its C all the way. So the practice is to make sure the code works in C first. However if it works in C but for some strange reason it makes Pharo freak out you are all by yourself. Pharo code that can crash Pharo is the one that needs debugging the most. So to find these bug which fortunately there were not many I had to crash Pharo countless times and move extremely slow and step by step. None the less I success was the final result and I learned a ton in the process. On Thu, Mar 9, 2017 at 1:38 PM Stephane Ducasse <stepharo.self@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi guys
During the DSU workshop we were brainstorming about what are the most difficult bugs we faced and what are the conceptual tools that would have helped you.
Stef