Writing code only comes second when talking about the developer work. The main and first task is reading and debugging. For that purpose, the Eclipse Java development tools are wonderful. Its most powerful tools are often unknown though. This talk will help you unleash this power and help you debug your Java code like a pro. The talk will also cover the new debugging features that are coming with Eclipse 4.8 (code name Oxygen, to be released late June 2017). So, even if you're an experienced Java programmer, you will learn some tips and tricks.
This talk will be full of live debugging sessions on various applications and of many kinds. Among others, you will see the following concepts in action:
- All about breakpoints: conditional, method, hit counts, trigger (new in Oxygen), traces (new in Oxygen)
- Local and remote debugging: local debugging is business as usual, but you will learn how to debug an application while it's running on a remote server.
- Inspect and watch Java expressions: learn how to see value and watch complex expressions that may not be in your code to better understand what is going on.
- Object details formatters: will explain how to override the toString() method of a class you don't own for your debugging purpose.
- Logical structures: learn how to customize the tree viewer in the Variables view (e.g. to display you custom Collection as an array, without the bloody implementation details).
Source code is available: https://github.com/mbarbero/eclipseconfrance2017-debuglikeapro-demo
