Yes, a console being flooded with information is notoriously a great way to debug and visualize complex data structures. Jokes aside, what about information that updates on a per-frame basis, or at the very least, very rapidly. Not to even mention how useful the library is for updating information, like tweaking properties or settings within your scripts at runtime or even managing complex systems. Visualizing a look vector as 3 statically positioned numbers that change values automatically is significantly easier when itâs not scrolling up and down.
Also, no, itâs not for rookie developers. From what I understand, even Rockstar Games uses a visual debugging system (I believe they even use ImGui, though I could be wrong or it could be a fork). Having a better way to transmit and manipulate information outside of a scrolling box of un-formatted text, though you may not believe me, can be immensely useful even to experienced developers.
As well, no it is not a plugin, itâs a library (as the title very clearly states). It is a library that can be used in the context of plugins but it is also usable in-game. By your logic, evaeraâs promise library (which, might I mention, is also incredibly useful and could definitely prove to be a great tool for new and experienced developers alike) would be considered a plugin?
Its notorious for bad developers to not delete printing. Printing to debug is a good way to debug your scripts
What are the potential issues of âbeatifyingâ the debug process?
You cant check for information only at specific moments (like only when they first touch a brick)
It becomes more difficult to figure out why something is functioning in a way you dont intend without being able to check the values of objects at specific lines of code.
Its likely you will get flooded with redundant information because its hard to tell a plugin exactly what your thought processes are.
Output can be seen directly while scripting
All prints are in the same location and share a effective style.
You can use warnings to bolden information
By relying heavily on automated debugging solutions, you might become less adept at manually debugging code, which can be a valuable skill in more complex or unconventional debugging scenarios.
This response alone is ridiculously ambiguous. And, no, like I said, you seem to be completely clueless to te nature of this library. Itâs not for visualizing errors in basic systems, itâs for controlling and visualizing information in larger structured systems (for a generalized example that can be applicable to a lot of situations, imagine lining up a bunch of the vector components of cframes next to each other so you can more easily piece together what your code is influencing and where it may be going wrong).
Also, to further show why your point is naive and ignores the entire purpose of the library, printing things out is also widely considered to be sub-optimal practice. Unit tests and debuggers are significantly better options to debugging, yet printing things out is still widely done because itâs easy and quick (just like a certain library we are talking about!)
No, and this goes to show what I mean. This package is available on Github and via ported versions through package managers like Wally. Itâs not a plugin, it is a library.
I apologize if Iâm coming off as slightly rude, but to be quite honest, itâs very irresponsible to make declarations about what is and isnât good practice when you clearly donât understand the reasons behind many of these practices. Making vague and inapplicable criticisms of something while painting yourself to be knowledgeable about it obviously may have negative effects on newer developers who may not realize the faults in your argument, and thus would be giving up an immensely useful tool because they didnât know any better.
No, itâs not me trying to sound smart, and your assumption of that is quite insulting. Visualizing nine different numbers next to each-other instead of in a matrix structure is very obviously not more intuitive, because if it were then the standard mathematical notation wouldnât be the way it is.
Iâm not trying to convince you to use this library, since given your naivety and generally rude demeanor and lack of technical knowledge, it likely is too complicated for your use cases. Iâm simply trying to explain flaws in your argument to make this library more approachable to developers who may not be able to see through your inapplicable blanket statements.
I would like to apologize for my behavior. I would like to critically analyze this source to determine its relevance for myself and other creators. This information will serve a valuable purpose in determining this pluginâs effectiveness. From now on, letâs not resort to name-calling or insults.
From my understanding, this is claimed to be a library. I want to analyze critically the lack of clarity this article provides in its usage. Under the usage section, it claims that
Furthermore, it does not provide any relevant information to determine its use. After reading more, we can discover that they state the following.
From this data alone, it can only be concluded that this is a plugin of some sort that is intended to streamline the process of creating GUIs in your game. it does not mention its capabilities but rather it assumes users know external platforms.
It literally says itâs for âstreamlining the process for creating visualization, debug tools, and data inputâ in the quote you used. It doesnât assume anything of the user, it just literally says itâs there to streamline debugging and data visualization. I appreciate you being more polite about your points though, thank you for that.
Edit: Iâm going to be heading off now to go to sleep but I look forward to continuing this disccusion tomorrow. Good night
I apologize for missing that. Even in that case however its quite ambiguous what they mean and it would serve them well to clarify its uses. Not just that but it should also convince users of its benefit over normal debugging. This would help to bring the tool to more users and free up common confusion.
Not entirely sure what is the issue in using a âFree modelâ like Iris, this library was made for other people to use it for themselves, meaning that it has been created, built and planned for a easy use for everyone, it literally EXIST to be used by you or me.
Those developers are contributing on a product with no compensation for it, and you just outright claiming that using this library will reduce the quality of a game, which is disrespectful.
It doesnât mean you are necessarily wrong when you criticize, but iâm afraid some of your arguments like âRoblox output is literally all you need.â seems a little too personal ? i know youâll do well with just printing as a solo dev, but i canât really imagine a large scale project where scripters need to toggle on/off their debugs when they have to log off everytime.
Moreover, the output is just a warn/error/cmd history, you only need to check out some of the post above to see this libraryâs true potential :
Well looking at other scripters, most of them do not know how to do/comprehend OOP yet. And Iâd believe so yes ROBLOX is based off of OOP. But i donât see how that proves anything on your end? Not everyone is going to know OOP as soon as they start scripting just because ROBLOX is OOPâd by default if thatâs where youre getting⌠idk. And besides, werenât we talking about Iris library? Why we talking about me? Youâre just nitpicking no? I dont wanna argue though so just leave it as is
This is just disrespectful, maintaining an open source project is extremely difficult and tedious especially when you arenât getting paid for it, it is super demotivating when people come along and just say âOh yeah your work is useless and no one should use itââŚ
This has to be the most straight up disrespectful reply I have ever seen in the devforum for something so useful and from someone so ignorant. Itâs like hearing âwe donât need ModuleScripts, Iâve never needed to reuse my code for multiple scripts!â â because youâre so good at coding, you just manually type everything, yeah?
If youâve never used the workflow that this library was intended for or issues that this was meant to solve, then just say you donât understand why itâs necessary. Even I felt the same way when I first saw this, until I started using it and realized how easy it made a lot of certain things. I agree there could be better documentation, but for now it seems the people who would use this are people who already know how to.
And get off your high horse. You seem to put your purist form of scripting in high regard, while the rest of us just want to get work done faster and easier so we can work on better stuff. If youâre offended that there are tools you canât understand, thatâs your problem because the comments here have tried to explain it multiple times.
This is probably the WORST take Iâve ever seen in my history of being on the developer forums. Let me just break down the things wrong with this:
âNobody is making a text label to debug our code. We are all printing our issues.â
This is significantly wrong. Most people have debug GUIs to manage their stuff internally. Printing is for low-level debugging, like barebones stuff.
âThis is just going to make my game low quality because I am essentially using free model GUI instead of using my own GUIâ
How is this going to make your game low quality? The idea of re-using other code to improve your game is the fundamental of open-source software. If your whole tech stack is going to be proprietary code then youâre kind of missing out, just saying.
âThis plugin is useless and a waste of devs times.â
First, this isnât even a plugin. This is a library. Thereâs a difference.
Second, you couldnât be more wrong when stating that Iris is useless. You may think that it serves no use, when in reality it has more uses than you could even think of. Iris is probably one of the most useful immediate mode UI libraries currently available for Roblox.
Third, Iris is not wasting anytime. Rather, YOU are wasting time by creating these useless arguments that contribute absolutely nothing. Iâm sorry if I hit you in a soft spot but itâs just the truth. Your arguments are just plain wrong.
