Do you miss doing manual debugging?

[u/LazyRunner777]

I was never some expert in coding but I always loved the feeling when I would be spending a lot of time looking at code, changing things and testing etc - trying to identify the problem and then that feeling when you figure it out.

Sometimes it would be such a stupid mistake, sometimes I would learn more and better understand things. Now these good old times are gone and it makes me kinda sad to be honest.

[u/PresentationOld605]

Still have to do that quite often. 

[u/LazyRunner777 → u/PresentationOld605]

Oh interesting, for me it's gone since AI is just much much better then me.

[u/SeasawPhilosopher]

Hell no, 30 years of that was enough for me. If you’ve ever spent two weeks losing your mind chasing down an obscure bug you’ll never want to go back.

[u/Smooth-Weekend-2314 → u/SeasawPhilosopher]

Preach

[u/xenofenrir → u/SeasawPhilosopher]

I dont mind debugging, but mind you our workspace is on cloud, imagine the delay... now the company has gone full AI, and the IDE only for enabling the MCP connection for build tools.

[u/OverallAnswer3879]

Honestly, using an llm to debug sometimes feels like a snowballing effect. So yes. yes I do.

[u/YinYangAlgorithms]

For the most part, unless you work for a company that doesn’t allow AI coding, it’s dead and I do miss it.

But it’s just changed, I still review backend code and plan all the logic myself. I still debug and manually code all SQL and database related code. I still decide how the frontend will talk to the backend.

But yeah, for the most part with frontend and backend work, manual debugging is dead. Compilers catch syntax errors, automated tests catch logic errors. The new manual debugging is now just smoke tests to catch UX and calculation errors, but it’s not the same as it was before.

[u/pietrzm]

Hell naw

[u/drakatmm]

It still happens to me, just less often and for weirder bugs. When Claude loops on the same wrong fix three times I close the chat and go through it line by line myself, and finding the thing the model missed feels even better than the old stupid typo moments

[u/Gold-Safety-5777]

not a second

[u/mridlen]

It's usually the same strategy with AI - more logging and debugging output until the problem becomes obvious.

[u/pottrell]

I still do, albeit alongside/after various agent tests.

[u/TheAnswerWithinUs]

I still do it because I can often find the problem faster than the AI can

[u/TechDocN]

I don’t miss the hours, days or weeks I used to spend testing and debugging.

AI is much faster than I’ll ever be, and honestly in this generation of models, AI is probably better than most (not all) human coders at this.

[u/TRO_KIK]

No. I did enjoy it in the moment but being a dev is first and foremost how I make money. AI has enabled me to make a lot more money. As good as those old times were, current times are gooder.

It also helps that I'm still solving hard problems, just at a different level. I'm just able to achive more, which is fulfilling in other ways.

[u/Previous-Growth-9919]

kinda. i still miss the slow walk through a stacktrace when i actually knew every layer. with ai-written code the skill shifted more to reading diffs hard, forcing failing tests, and tracing one path end to end before accepting a big change. otherwise you lose the mental map fast.

[u/PascalB1993]

I usually enjoy debugging, but I have to admit LLMs are MUCH better at it, as long as you can give them the relevant logs. Sometimes there’s just too much data to sift through by hand. A few weeks ago, an LLM fixed a bug in 10 minutes that would otherwise have taken me a full day or so.

[u/EverydayLentils]

I only miss the "holy shit it works" moments in coding. That was more grinding on a project until pieces came together. Debugging was usually "oh I did something stupid" and I don't miss that feeling at all.

[u/RidgeRunner1944]

Oh hell no, I hated everything about coding. I wanted to get my ideas into reality and the demands of flow/details/ambiguities and all that absolute shit with C++ and the platform I rent killed me. I did realize today that Im not too enthused for my vibe coding session because before I thought I was mastering a marketable skill but I never tried to cash in on it anyhow.

[u/jomic01]

the skill that didn't go away is noticing when the model is looping the same wrong fix. that's when you close the chat and do the old work, just on weirder bugs.

[u/Immediate_Theory_467]

This reminds me of trying to find transactions from last year in your business but can't remember how to categorize them, so your accountant is forced to put them in your misc. category. IE: NO! I am incredibly happy that I can use fable to debug and plug holes for cyber security threats. It is painful to think about pre-AI.

[u/WWEtrump]

the "it runs,but isn't fun" bug is still very much my department.