> if I can debug code on my workstation, that does not seem extremely difficult. Time consuming, if anything,
I find debugging saves time overall. I don't have to guess about anything, I can see it working or not working, quickly run one liners to confirm. Sometimes getting an application into a certain state takes a bit of wrangling too, and a debugger helps save time by not having to constantly set up that state to see how things have occurred. You can just sit on a breakpoint while you deduce what's going on. A bug that happens at checkout success is a good example. Going through checkout over and over again is time consuming.
> debugger helps save time by not having to constantly set up that state to see how things have occurred
Absolutely. I found out very quickly in my career that I can either stare into the code for hours to see the tiny mistake, or spend 10 minutes stepping through the code to let it tell me what's wrong.
But, it is of course more difficult if you have to debug a complex code base that you don't know. It might take you hours to even know where to place debuggers. So, it can be time consuming, but of course it's still orders of magnitude faster than staring into the code, trying to see where the issue is.
I find debugging saves time overall. I don't have to guess about anything, I can see it working or not working, quickly run one liners to confirm. Sometimes getting an application into a certain state takes a bit of wrangling too, and a debugger helps save time by not having to constantly set up that state to see how things have occurred. You can just sit on a breakpoint while you deduce what's going on. A bug that happens at checkout success is a good example. Going through checkout over and over again is time consuming.