Many people are creating apps without using even standard debugging techniques. We tend to stay as “puts debuggers” because it is easy, stable and reliable. But we lose a lot of troubleshooting productivity without good debugging skills. The first step is to discover the Pry (binding.pry) and Byebug (byebug) debuggers. They allow you to set a breakpoint, stop app execution there, and print out current variables on the stack. But debugging is not limited to breakpoints. The next step is learning how to walk step-by-step inside the app – stepping into functions, etc.
Great results can be achieved by combining both of these solutions with pry-byebug, which adds the navigation commands from Byebug to the Pry command line.
The best debugging experience would be provided via a visual debugger, like in the IntelliJ RubyMine IDE. It requires an additional Gem, and the app must be run using a special launcher, but as a result you can set breakpoints and step through code right in your IDE. You can also see all the variables on the stack at each step. Such a high density of visual debug info can dramatically increase productivity, and decrease the time needed to track down an error.