Subject: Re: bug#61847: debug-early-backtrace only works some of the time.

From: Eli Zaretskii <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2023 15:32:35 +0200

> Cc: [email-masked]
> Date: Tue, 28 Feb 2023 19:52:33 +0000
> From: Alan Mackenzie <[email-masked]>
> 
> The purpose of a backtrace is not to enter a beauty contest.  Rather
> it's to provide the programmer with as much information as
> reasonably possible to solve a bug.

Information that is humanly-readable and understandable, yes.  Not
just any information.  Showing raw bytes of the bytecode is not very
useful information, IMNSHO.  Or at least we could make it much more
useful, if we really want that part to be presented to the programmer.

> prin1 by contrast prints the actual contents of the function - its byte
> code string and its constant vector, among other things.  It may not be
> as "readable", but it is infinitely more useful to the person trying to
> debug a bug.

1 is "infinitely more" than zero, but it is still just 1.  Not 1`00
and not 1000.

IOW, just because relatively you get an "infinite" improvement, the
net improvement is still very small, and there's no reason to stop
there.

So your argument against cl-prin1, if taken to its logical conclusion,
should be rephrased as "let's improve cl-prin1", not "let's go back to
the infinitely useless prin1".