Double tooltips

[David Nolden]

2010/9/8 Vladimir Prus <ghost at cs.msu.su>:
>> That may be true if you're debugging code that you've written by
>> yourself. However debugging can also be used to "learn" how specific
>> code works, for example to see what code paths are used on a specific
>> action, without having to instantly fully understand a huge new
>> codebase. In such a situation, both tooltips would be useful.
>
> Even then, a value tooltip is useful every single time a given line
> of code is executed. context tooltip will soon become less and less
> useful. And if both tooltips are shown by default, and then context
> tooltip is disabled with the "x" button -- you won't get context
> tooltip for a variable you never saw before.

Your usecase of debugging seems to be "debug a small, closed, piece of
code, and watch how the variables change". However, there is also the
"debug a whole complex application, watch how the flow leads through
many different contexts".

In the second usecase you will see many different contexts, and the
code-tooltip is useful to get an overview of the surrounding. At least
for me, the second usecase is also more relevant in a debugger,
because for the first usecase, I can easily insert assertions and
debug-output into the limited amount of code.

Btw. the idea was to show a "+" sign with which the user could get a
hidden tooltip back. It's true that the code tooltip might get
annoying when you're hovering the same variable again and again just
to see the changing value.

Greetings, David