[jdt-debug-dev] What we learned about developers' debugging behavior

[Moritz Beller <m.m.beller@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

I have some data about how developers debug, and I would like to share 
this with you, because I think it can inform future design decision on 
the Eclipse Debugger and possibly make it (even) more user friendly.

More specifically, my team and I have complemented a survey with 
objective data on debugging bahvior from instrumenting the IDEs of more 
than 300 Eclipse and IntelliJ developers. Some of our findings came in 
quite unexpected (for example, debugging only took around 14% of 
developer's IDE time and that specializations of breakpoints beyond 
simple line breakpoints were less known and even much less used than 
expected; most developers did not know class prepare breakpoints at 
all). We have many more findings (too many to squeeze them in one 
email), which, I would think, might influence the future design of the 
Eclipse debugger.

Would anybody of you be interested in a casual Skype (max: 30 min) in 
which I present our findings and we brainstorm about them? I would think 
this might be of interest especially to Sarika and Michael.

Best
Moritz

PS. I am not some random dude off the Internet. I've made contributions 
to Eclipse (Eclipse Code Recommenders), spoken at two EclipseCons and a 
demo camp, and maintained and developed a set of Eclipse Plugins, 
arguably most known of which might be WatchDog for Eclipse: 
https://testroots.org/

--
Moritz Beller                            Twitter:  @Inventitech
TU Delft                    Software Engineering Research Group
Office HB08.290                    Mekelweg 4, NL-2628 CD Delft
http://www.inventitech.com                       +31 6 37199377