Time inside a Time Travelling Debugger
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Join For FreeWhen we were developing Chronon and started using it ourselves, we realized something very intriguing. You see, the various views of Chronon allow you to step not only forward and backward but to any random point in time. For example, using the Variable History view, you can instantly jump to when a variable became ‘null’ or use one of the powerful filters in method history view to jump directly to a particular call of a method.
The problem
Since you are not just stepping forward, it is easy to get lost in time.
For example:
- How does one event relate to the other, did it happen before or after the other?
- Did I just jump forward or backward when I clicked in the variable history view?
- If I did jump backward/forward, by how much did I jump?
- Where am I in the execution of my program? Am I near the end of my program/ middle or end?
The Solution
Imagine you are a real world time traveler. What is the most important tool in your arsenal?
A clock.
We needed some sort of a clock inside Chronon to solve all the above issues.
Thus we invented the concept of ‘time’.
- It literally shows the current time value.
- The progress bar gives you an idea of how far down the execution of the program you are.
See the bar completely fill up, well you are near the end, if its almost empty, you are near the beginning. - We also added ‘time bookmarks’ in this view which act as a checkpoint mechanism for anything interesting you might want to return to in the future.
From http://eblog.chrononsystems.com/time-inside-a-time-travelling-debugger
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