Do not use a "debugger".

A debugger is like doing a full-body scan of a sick person. You do not get any specific useful information, and you find a whole lot of information that doesn't help and is just confusing.

Source: Learn Python The Hard Way

Your thought on it?

Depends on the kind of debugger. gdb/pdb don't give you any information unless you ask for it.

Print debugging works well only if your program runs quickly. If you have to wait 5 minutes after inserting another print call, a debugger is a better solution.

For learning I think a debugger isn't really necessary. So while reading the book I'd stick to his way. Later you can then see where a debugger makes more sense.

The point they make there is that most of the time, python's excellent stack tracing should give you enough of an idea where shit hit the fan.
And so far I can say that most of the time that holds true.

I use a debugger to try fixing memory leaks due to improper garbage collection in .NET... Why we can't dispose variables ourselves in C# is something I will never understand.

@evilmupp3t If it crashes, yes. But to trace down logical bugs a debugger is extremely useful. I wouldnt go near a language/tool that hasn't a decent debugger with singlestep and breakpoints.

Maybe this person doesn't know how to use their debugger properly.. still I have seen people rely too much on the debugger when they could just read the code to find what they need.

@spacem If you talked about me True I don't know much about debuggers I debug with print lines but the author Zed Shaw (you may know him from "Programming, Motherfucker" initiative) definitely must know about debuggers.

This comes from nature of Python. I never had to use any debugger, you just put logging/print() here and there to debug anything.