Are you still using var_dump, var_export, echo, die, etc?
For most of people it looks easy and simple, compared to setting up another tool. While frontend developers prefer to add more tools to streamline their development process, it looks like backend WordPress developers (core, plugin) are not so much into adding more tools that will make their process and development environment more complicated.
We’ll setup a scenario:
You are building plugin that has a post-back, where another URL on your system will be called in background.
With dumping approach you will have to “record” headers and body of post-back request, then setup that in another script, or any other tool to “emulate” that request. With data changing on every request, this process becomes overwhelming and chances of not covering most of possible use-cases are increasing.With XDebug this becomes easy as click.
Make it more simple, more fast, more reliable and helps you visualise whole process, variables and processes running on your code.For 90 minutes you will have a chance to try and improve your debugging skills, learn basic about XDebug, how to set it up on your local machine, and how to get it running.