The only time I need to pull out a debugger is when I can't reason through the problem on my own (possibly with a couple print statements)
By and large, the only time I can't reason through the problem on my own is because the code in question is not properly unit tested, and it is complex to isolate the problem itself.
The only time it's worth my time to bring out the debugger is when the issue is so opaque as to require that level of in-depth investigation. I've spent days tracking down esoteric heap smashers in gdb.
However, most of the time, I just watch my unit test assertions fail, and then fix the issue.
By and large, the only time I can't reason through the problem on my own is because the code in question is not properly unit tested, and it is complex to isolate the problem itself.
The only time it's worth my time to bring out the debugger is when the issue is so opaque as to require that level of in-depth investigation. I've spent days tracking down esoteric heap smashers in gdb.
However, most of the time, I just watch my unit test assertions fail, and then fix the issue.