Summary

Visual Studio .NET debugging is the state-of-the-art debugger on the market today. Microsoft listened to developers and produced a debugger that makes some extremely difficult debugging problems much easier to debug. This chapter introduced the common breakpoint features across managed and native code. As you've seen, the debugger can do a considerable amount of work for you if you know how to utilize it effectively. You should strive to make the most of the Visual Studio .NET debugger so that you can minimize the time you spend in it.

Advanced breakpoints help you avoid tedious debugging sessions by allowing you to specify the exact conditions under which a breakpoint triggers. While both managed and native code have special breakpoint features, the location breakpoint modifiers, hit counts, and condition expressions are your best friends, mainly because the breakpoint modifiers will save you a huge amount of time since they'll allow you to use the debugger more efficiently. I strongly encourage you to play with them a bit so that you can see what you can and can't do, thus avoiding having to learn their idiosyncrasies under extreme pressure.