nowfound

Life & fun · November 11, 2023

I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old

Hey HN my name is Thassilo, I'm a student and passionate programmer from Germany. I want to showcase Spray, a small C debugger I've been working on for a few months now. Spray has a very simple and approachable interface. Its feature set is limited at this point, but it's already enough to tackle some basic problems. I stared to work on Spray because I was curious about how debuggers work. I am also trying to design Spray in such a way that it's easy to grasp and has a small mental overhead. I'd love to get your feedback on Spray. Email: d4kd (at) proton (dot) me PS: I'm generally interested…

I spent 6 months building a C debugger as a 17-year-old launched on November 11, 2023 with 393 votes, #62 of 4,332 launches that month and more than 99% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 2 years on.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 1% of November 2023

In plain words

Spray is a C debugger with a simple, approachable interface designed for basic debugging tasks. Built by a German student over several months, it prioritizes ease of use and minimal cognitive overhead for developers learning how debuggers work. The tool has limited features but provides enough functionality to address common debugging problems. It is available on GitHub for those interested in exploring how debugging tools operate.

written from the facts on this page · September 2026

From the sources

A x86_64 Linux debugger 🐛🐛🐛. Contribute to thass0/spray development by creating an account on GitHub.

In the maker’s words, at launch

Hey HN my name is Thassilo, I'm a student and passionate programmer from Germany. I want to showcase Spray, a small C debugger I've been working on for a few months now. Spray has a very simple and approachable interface. Its feature set is limited at this point, but it's already enough to tackle some basic problems.…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • AW
    A web debugger an ex-Cloudflare team has been working on for 4 years2024 · ▲886

    Hey HN, I wanted to show you a product a small team and I have been working on for 4 years. https://jam.dev It’s called Jam and it prevents product managers (like I used to be) from being able to create vague and un-reproducible bug tickets (like I used to create). It’s actually really hard as a non-engineer to file useful bug tickets for engineers. Like, sometimes I thought I included a screenshot, but the important information the engineer needed was what was actually right outside the boundary of the screenshot I took. Or I'd write that something "didn't work" but the engineer…

  • Leaping – Debug Python tests instantly with an LLM debugger2024 · github.com · ▲120

    Hi HN! We’re Adrien and Kanav. We met at our previous job, where we spent about a third of our lives combating a constant firehose of bugs. In the hope of reducing this pain for others in the future, we’re working on automating debugging. We’re currently working on a platform that ingests logs and then automatically reproduces, root causes and ultimately fixes production bugs as they happen. You can see some of our work on this here - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39528087 As we were building the root-cause phase of our automated debugger, we realized that we developed…

  • debugcode.ai2023 · debugcode.ai · ▲103

    Debug like never before with the power of AI

  • Uscope, a new Linux debugger written from scratch2025 · github.com · ▲262

    Hi! I've been building a debugger on my nights and weekends because it's fun, and I personally need a better debugger for my work. GDB and LLDB pain me greatly; we can and will do better! As explained in the README, it's still very early-days and it's not ready for use yet, but check back often because it's improving all the time! Check out https://calabro.io/uscope for a more detailed explanation. Thanks for taking a look!

  • Debugger that generates video visualizations for algorithm learning2020 · github.com · ▲102

    A simple Python debugger and profiler that generates animated visualizations of program flow, useful for algorithm learning. - CCExtractor/vardbg

  • Debucsser, CSS debugging made easy2018 · github.com · ▲63

    CSS debugging tool with an unpronounceable name. Contribute to lucagez/Debucsser development by creating an account on GitHub.

More life & fun this month

the category →

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, November 2023

the whole month →
  • Flowla▲1,119

    Digital sales rooms that wow buyers

    Growth · 2023 · flowla.com

  • Discover & book top creators to promote your product

    Growth · 2023 · passionfroot.me

  • Re:catch▲939

    If Google Form & Calendly had a baby

    Growth · 2023 · recatch.cc

  • Pitch 2.0▲886

    Create, share and analyze presentations faster than ever

    Work · 2023 · pitch.com

  • CRM built for modern teams & creators powered by AI

    AI · 2023 · leaddelta.com

  • Hi HN, I’m Kashish, one of the co-founders of SpeedVitals, a platform for testing & monitoring website performance with a major emphasis on Core Web Vitals. Until now, our platform has only focused on Synthetic/Lab testing, such as Lighthouse tests and TTFB tests. But now, we have developed a Real-User Monitoring platform that doubles up as a Web Analytics tool. One major feature we have that most RUM tools lack is Performance Audits. Just like Lighthouse audits work on Lab test data, our audits work across all the real-user visits and gives suggestions on what task to prioritize first.…

    Dev tools · 2023 · speedvitals.com