A debugger is how you get a view into a system that's too complicated to
understand.
"I can understand the system just by reading the code and thinking about it."
That's an insane statement. You can't even read all the code on a big system.
You have to do experiments on it. Adding debug statements, recompiling, and
re-running it is an incredibly inefficient way of doing things. Yes, you can
always get things done even if you're working with stone knives and bear
skins, but it's amazing what you can do with much better tools.
When I'm working on code I'm always running it from the debugger. The first
thing I do after writing code is set a breakpoint and step through the code
and see if it's actually doing what I expected it to do. Other people say ,
"Oh I do that in my head." Well, your head is a faulty interpreter. The
debugger is a kind of companion. It's like you're coding in an interactive way
with another being.
- John Carmack (https://youtu.be/I845O57ZSy4?t=3512)
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Do you run your XSLT code from a debugger? If so, what debugger do you use?
/Roger