While developing a prototype of DIS to check and validate it, I'm frequently confronted to bugs.
One reason is that the complexity of the program is comparable to a compiler. Individual encoding rules are simple, but they can be used in an infinite set of combinations.
After testing many different debuggers on Linux, my conclusion is that none of them is as good as the one of Visual C++ on Windows. So when I have to develop new code which may require debugging, I always develop it with Visual C++. Once it is validated, I move it on Linux.
The biggest difference is in the capability to explore data structures, STL containers, and other application specific data. If there wasn't Visual C++, I would have completely dropped Windows. It was thus a very smart marketing move of Microsoft to make Visual C++ available for free.
But Visual C++ is not yet perfect. So when not debugging, I prefer working on Linux. On feature I'm really missing in Visual C++ is one provided in Eclipse.
With object oriented programming, one usually store one class per file. I guess it is to simplify locating the class definition information. Simply look for a file with the same name as the class. The back side of this is that we end up with the code spread in many files. But when browsing the code, I often met a method call and would like to see its implementation.
To do this I have to switch to, or open, the corresponding file, locate the method definition in the file. Once examined, I may want to go back to where I was before.
Eclipse has this smart and powerful ability to change an identifier into a hyper text link. One simply move the pointer over the identifier and press the control key at the same time. The identifier changes into a hyper text link (underlined blue text) and a click moves you directly on the method implementation.
In visual, you get a context menu when clicking on an identifier and then you have to locate and click the "go to definition" menu command. Two clicks.
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