All I wanted was to see inside an ArrayList — but now you can too!

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I’m learning Zig. I chose a HOCON parser as my intro project. I am writing it from scratch and the parser core is mine, no AI writing it for me, because typing the code myself is the whole point. AI is my mentor: it shows me the proper idioms, helps me prepare tests, and generates auxiliary tools — e.g., Java and Python parsers to check compatibility.

Very soon I realized I was learning a systems language without a debugger. Not having a good debugger is like learning anatomy from a book with the pictures torn out. I don’t want std.debug.print archaeology. I want to put a breakpoint into my parser, run one test, and look at my ArrayList.

That turned out to be a bigger ask than I expected.

Debugging on Miloš Kozák

All I wanted was to see inside an ArrayList — but now you can too!