GDB (GNU Debugger)
The most recommended of 9 debuggers
Free command-line debugger that people rely on for crash analysis, core dumps, and assembly work, often driven from a terminal or editor. Critics say it handles C++ types poorly and has weak tracing support.
Free command-line debugger that people rely on for crash analysis, core dumps, and assembly work, often driven from a terminal or editor. Critics say it handles C++ types poorly and has weak tracing support.
45 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 29
- criticize it
- 16
- approval share
- 64%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 29 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 1.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Works from terminal and editors
“gdb and others have perfectly fine text mode interfaces”
Comment from 28 Mar 2026 in “Improved Git Diffs with Delta, Fzf and a Little Shell Scripting” “I have inline debugging with gdb in neovim.”
Comment from 16 Dec 2025 in “VS Code deactivates IntelliCode in favor of the paid Copilot” “I also love the simplicity of c vim and gdb”
Comment from 10 Jun 2026 in “Grit: Rewriting Git in Rust with Agents” - Comment from 5 Jan 2026 in “I switched from VSCode to Zed”
- Comment from 26 Nov 2025 in “JOPA: Java compiler in C++, Jikes modernized to Java 6 with Claude”
Good for assembly and low-level work
“Gdb is an excellent debugger for assembly, even when the original code was written in C”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Assembly Nights (2021)” “Running gdb as subprocess, with breakpoints, step, run, continue, is the basic stuff.”
Comment from 19 May 2026 in “No More JetBrains Products for Me” “that's can be done via GDB as well - save RAM + registers and then load them back”
Comment from 28 Feb 2026 on Hacker News - Comment from 30 Jun 2026 in “It's Linux, on a Sega Genesis”
Useful for debugging almost anything
“GDB (or lldb, or valgrind, etc.) is useful for debugging just about anything.”
Comment from 14 May 2026 in “Myths about /dev/urandom” “It helps to mess around a lot with smaller programs in gdb or lldb”
Comment from 10 May 2026 in “Show HN: Building a web server in assembly to give my life (a lack of) meaning” “debugging it is relatively sane with gdb”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Thoughts on Generating C” - Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Assembly Nights (2021)”
Essential for crash and core dump analysis
“The great thing about such crashes is if you have coredumps enabled that you can just load the crashed binary into GDB and type 'where'”
Comment from 7 Nov 2025 in “A Note on Fil-C” “being able to just fire up gdb and get an immediate landscape of what the issues were in the program was just invaluable”
Comment from 22 Feb 2026 in “Fix Your Tools”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Slow or weak tracing support
“gdb thread apply all bt is slow but does full call stack walking”
Comment from 25 Jan 2026 in “I built a 2x faster lexer, then discovered I/O was the real bottleneck” “the tracing support is so bad in gdb”
Comment from 30 Dec 2025 in “You Need to Ditch VS Code” “GDB and perf are not even in the same league.”
Comment from 14 Dec 2025 in “RemoveWindowsAI” Poor C++ type and data display
“I'm unhappy with the tooling GDB/LLDB provide for displaying and debugging this information”
Comment from 1 Dec 2025 in “Durin is a library for reading and writing the Dwarf debugging format” “handlig c++ types with gdb can be a nightmare”
Comment from 25 Nov 2025 in “Rethinking C++: Architecture, Concepts, and Responsibility” Fails on corrupted stacks or segmented memory
“the cherry on top is that gdb just stops being useful since it doesn't know anything about segmented memory”
Comment from 22 Apr 2026 in “Theseus, a Static Windows Emulator” “I stopped using it once it would break when the stack became corrupted and haven't tried it since.”
Comment from 16 Mar 2026 in “Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (March 2026)”
Other debuggers people recommend
The four most recommended other debuggers, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GDB (GNU Debugger)This page | 29 | 16 | 64% | 10 | — | — |
| WinDbg | 14 | 3 | 82% | 7 | — | Approved |
| HyperProbe | 12 | 1 | 92% | 1 | — | — |
| RenderDoc | 10 | 1 | 91% | 4 | — | Approved |
| RAD Debugger | 7 | 1 | 88% | 6 | — | — |
What people said
40 of the 48 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“GDB has sufficed pretty well”
“We had better tools 30 years ago when pure assembly work was more common.”
“Gdb is an excellent debugger for assembly, even when the original code was written in C”
“Using GDB to debug Asm is... certainly a choice.”
“ptrace() is unbelievably crappy, and gdb is approximately as crappy.”
“gdb is certainly in the class of debuggers that get this wrong”
“I'd crawl over an acre of 'Visual This++' and 'Integrated Development That' to get to gcc, Emacs, and gdb.”
“You've earned your place in history.”
“That makes for a surprisingly nice”
“A COLLECTION of useful programs alongside a kernel such as Linux.”
“GDB support for any type of binary debugging was almost non-existent”
“debug when registers were getting trashed etc with GDB”
“Well, there's ptrace/gdb?”
“I also love the simplicity of c vim and gdb”
“a lot of the expected developer tools are just barely functional or don’t exist”
“the debugging experience in GDB or LLDB is worse than it really ought to be”
“Running gdb as subprocess, with breakpoints, step, run, continue, is the basic stuff.”
“GDB (or lldb, or valgrind, etc.) is useful for debugging just about anything.”
“It helps to mess around a lot with smaller programs in gdb or lldb”
“the cherry on top is that gdb just stops being useful since it doesn't know anything about segmented memory”
“gdb and others have perfectly fine text mode interfaces”
“I stopped using it once it would break when the stack became corrupted and haven't tried it since.”
“that's can be done via GDB as well - save RAM + registers and then load them back”
“They were much more successful in userland (coreutils, gcc and the toolchain, gdb, Emacs, to name a few).”
“being able to just fire up gdb and get an immediate landscape of what the issues were in the program was just invaluable”
“sometimes prints dark blue text on a black background, which is unreadable”
“debugging it is relatively sane with gdb”
“thank god for QEMU+gdb protocol”
“gdb thread apply all bt is slow but does full call stack walking”
“gdb from the terminal is good enough for me”
“the tracing support is so bad in gdb”
“I have inline debugging with gdb in neovim.”
“GDB and perf are not even in the same league.”
“I haven't needed Valgrind or gdb in years, except some projects integrating C libraries.”
“amd gdb is an actual debugger but it only works with applications that emit dwarf and use the amdkfd KMD”
“I'm unhappy with the tooling GDB/LLDB provide for displaying and debugging this information”
“just told it to use gdb when necessary”
“handlig c++ types with gdb can be a nightmare”
“I volunteered to improve OCaml's gdb support (including DWARF hell), which went nowhere”
“The great thing about such crashes is if you have coredumps enabled that you can just load the crashed binary into GDB and type 'where'”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.