Question

I´m coming from a PHP background where my debugging “tools” are basically echo, var_dump and exit. While I know the importance of debugging, I never tried to use/learn a debugging tool.

Now I´m learning C# and I think I can´t really program without an extensive knowledge of this area.

So my question is: where can I learn what is and how to do debugging? I know what is a breakpoint (conceptually), but how to use it? How to use Step into and Step over? Basic things like that.

As a related question, there is anything like var_dump in C# (Visual Studio), where I can inspect any object.

I find very difficult and painful to do a foreach for every array/list to see the contents, specially now that I´m still learning the language.

Answer 1

Microsoft has an extensive guide on C# debugging in Visual Studio that might be helpful.
VS has a lot of powerful debugging functionality; for example, rather than doing a foreach to see the contents of an array as you were describing, you could set a breakpoint (pausing the execution of the program) and select the variable you wish to see the contents of (array or list or whatever) and see what it contains, without having to write any extra code.
Step Into and Step Over can be used to continue execution of the program but only incrementally so that you can continue to see how variables change, where the flow of execution currently is, etc.