[DUG] I broke the D2006 debugger

[John Bird]

"just basic knowledge about how to debug in Delphi"  you might tell me where
this is documented in the debugger help, and where this basic knowledge
comes from - how did you get it for instance? (someone told you, hopefully
kindly).  Remember most operations in a GUI environment are based on many
implicit assumptions on how things on the screen behave.  For someone not
educated in an assumption they are not obvious...

I remember reading of Steve Balmer watching through a two way mirror at one
of the first useability labs of MS Word for windows - users were instructed
to drag the mouse down to scroll down the page, and some users, new to a
mouse, were seen to run the mouse  down the leg of the desk.  He literally
tore his hair out at how much he realised users had to be taought and said
the profound lesson is that you cannot assume users understand anything that
is obvious to you....they will not and they will break it!

"He who asks a question is a fool for a moment, he who doesn't ask a
question is a fool forever"
-Albert Einstein

John

-----Original Message-----
From: delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz [mailto:delphi-bounces at ns3.123.co.nz] On
Behalf Of Leigh Wanstead
Sent: Wednesday, 15 February 2006 7:59 a.m.
To: delphi at ns3.123.co.nz
Subject: RE: [DUG] I broke the D2006 debugger


Hi John,

I did not receive your previous email. But base on what you said in your
post, I must say that is just basic knowledge about how to debug in Delphi.
I think Delphi do a proper job as what instructed to do. Nothing wrong about
Delphi. The only thing I can suggest is to read a Delphi starter book which
I recalled that I suggested you long time ago in DUG mailing list IIRC.

Regards
Leigh
http://www.salenz.com

> I wasn't sure how to close it (did it via browser), but I added a 
> comment I regard it as closed - except I suggested that the IDE should 
> either not allow breakpoints to be entered if debug compile is turned 
> off, or warn if
> they are there.
> 
> Otherwise people like me who don't know will be completely mystified, 
> even if its obvious to others.  Remember the days before you knew 
> really really
> obvious things - someone had to teach you them.  I still remember my
> first
> day on a computer keyboard when someone told me to press Control/Z, and
> I
> said "What is this Control thing?" now it seems obvious but it sure as
> hell
> wasn't then.  And the IDE in this case didn't help with any hint....
> 
> In the end I solved it by taking the hint about blue dots missing and 
> googling "delphi blue dots missing when compile" and it gave lots of 
> references about search paths (which wasn't the problem) and stray 
> dcu's (which also wasn't) and one reference among dozens about 
> compiler option -D
> and +D (which sort of was).
> 
> John


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