Is an IDE Necessary for Debugging Fortran Code?

[Saladsamurai]

An IDE doesn't debug your code for you.

You debug code by thinking. and playing with an IDE is often a distraction from that.

Of course you need a debugger to tell you the basic information like where your code crashed. But 99% of the time you can get all the information you need from a core dump and a stack trace, wthout the pretty graphics.

I AlphaZero! I was just messing around with XCode and I noticed the term GDB everywhere. So I looked it up. It's a debugger! So yes, I understand now that an IDE is not a debugger.

So let's say for a second that I want to get into programming without an IDE. So I would need to learn about these things that you mentioned: core dump, stack trace and probably other things as well. Are these things that are generated by the 'debugger' (e.g. GDB)?

 

[I like Serena]

An IDE doesn't debug your code for you.

You debug code by thinking. and playing with an IDE is often a distraction from that.

Of course you need a debugger to tell you the basic information like where your code crashed. But 99% of the time you can get all the information you need from a core dump and a stack trace, wthout the pretty graphics.

I kind of like point-and-click, multiple-views and language-sensitive-keyboard-shortcuts to make it easier to find compiler errors and to debug code. :)

To find problems in mathematical formulas I agree that an IDE tends to distract.