Multiplayer Debugging Experience for Python, Node.js, Java, and C/C++

A couple of months ago, we announced our intention to create a new collaborative program comprehension experience for your repls. This project isn't just about figuring out what's wrong with your code, but really understanding what's going on, together with the people you work with. Today, we are happy to announce that we're releasing the first phase of this experience: a Replit-native, zero-configuration, multiplayer-friendly, interactive debugger for C, C++, Node.js, Python, and Java repls!

Our main goal is to make it easier to understand what your code is doing, and why. Up until now, if your code wasn't working correctly, it was only possible to find the root cause by (brace yourselves) stopping the program, optimistically adding log statements around the suspicious areas, running again, and repeating that process hoping that printing out variables will reveal enough to figure out what's wrong (also known as printf() debugging).

printf() debugging is a tool that's very easy to start with, but it gets tedious and unpredictable in the long run. Every time the code is changed to add a new log statement, new bugs may be introduced by accident (see Heisenbugs). Even though we firmly believe that the ultimate goal is to enable time-travel debugging for everyone (which prevents having to restart the debugging session if you accidentally skip the line you wanted to check!), having an interactive debugger available is still going to be useful for a lot of people.

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