@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+---
+title: Stop using dd()
+---
+
+Most PHP developers debug by printing. A `dd()` here, a `var_dump()` and `die` there,
+run it again, read the output, move the call somewhere else, run it again. Whole
+careers have been built on it, and it works often enough to feel like a method
+rather than a habit.
+
+It is worth asking why it became the default, because the reasons were real — and
+because most of them no longer hold.
+
+## Why it made sense
+
+For a long time, a step debugger for PHP was something you set up once, fought with,
+and gave up on.
+
+It was **hard to install**: a separate extension to get in place, and an editor to
+configure to match it.
+
+It was **slow**: loading it made every request noticeably worse, so it was something
+you enabled to hunt one bug and disabled immediately afterwards.
+
+It was **not there when you needed it**. Because it was slow, it stayed off. Because
+it stayed off, hitting a bug meant stopping, turning it on, restarting things, and
+trying to reproduce what you had just seen. By then, printing a variable and
+re-running had already answered the question.
+
+Against that, `dd()` was the rational choice. It needed nothing, cost nothing when
+absent, and was always available.
+
+## What changed
+
+All three of those reasons are gone.
+
+**The setup is one command.** The [installer](../getting-started/installation.mdx)
+works out what you are running and puts the right build in place. There are
+[prebuilt Docker images](../getting-started/docker.mdx) if you would rather not
+install anything at all.
+
+**It is fast.** With no editor connected the cost is close to nothing — the debugger
+tries once, finds no one listening, and gets out of the way. This is the whole point
+of the project.
+
+**It is always available.** Because it costs almost nothing, there is no reason to
+turn it off. Every request can be debugged, so the moment you want to look at
+something you already can — no restart, no configuration change, no reproducing the
+bug a second time.
+
+The debugger being off when you needed it was what made printing worth it. That is
+no longer true.
+
+## What printing cannot do
+
+Some of this is impossible with `dd()`. The rest is possible but so tedious that
+nobody does it.
+
+**See everything in scope, not just what you guessed.** `dd($order)` shows you
+`$order`. If the problem turns out to be `$discount`, that is another edit and
+another run. [The variables panel](./inspect-variables.md) shows all of it at once,
+including private and protected properties, without a single guess.
+
+**Look at the caller.** When a function chokes on what it was handed, the useful
+question is what the caller passed and where it came from. A debugger lets you
+[step up the call stack](./inspect-variables.md#stack-levels) and read the caller's
+variables at the moment it made the call. With printing you have to go and edit the
+caller too.
+
+**Carry on afterwards.** `dd()` kills the request — that is the second `d`. You see
+one moment and lose everything after it: the rest of the function, the response,
+the shutdown, the commit. A breakpoint pauses; you look, and then you
+[keep going](./step-debugging.md).
+
+**Watch a value change.** Printing gives you one snapshot per edit-and-run cycle. To
+see how a value evolves you add a dump per line, or a dump in a loop and then scroll
+through a thousand of them. Stepping shows you the change as it happens, and a
+[watch expression](./watches-and-edits.md) keeps the value in front of you at every
+stop.
+
+**Stop on the iteration that matters.** A dump inside a loop gives you every
+iteration. A [conditional breakpoint](./breakpoints.md#conditions) gives you the one
+where `$i > 1000 && $found === null` — the case you actually care about, with
+everything else running at full speed.
+
+**Catch a throw where it happens.** An
+[exception breakpoint](./breakpoints.md#exception-breakpoints) stops at the line
+that threw, before any `catch` runs, with the stack as it was. Printing gets you
+whatever the handler chose to log, from wherever it eventually ended up.
+
+**Change something and see what happens.** Force a retry path, hand an error handler
+a malformed response, push a value over a threshold —
+[edit the value in place](./watches-and-edits.md#editing-values) and carry on,
+rather than contriving the input or editing the code to fake it.
+
+**Debug what you cannot see.** A dump only helps if you can read the output. An API
+request, a queue worker, a webhook, a redirect, an AJAX call that a browser swallows
+— all of them are ordinary debugging sessions, and none of them show you a
+`var_dump()`.
+
+**Leave no trace.** Every `dd()` is an edit to your code, which means one can be
+committed, and eventually one is. Breakpoints live in your editor and cannot ship.
+
+## When it is still fine
+
+None of this makes printing wrong.
+
+If you want to know whether a line is reached, or what one variable holds at one
+point, and the answer ends the matter — print it. Starting a session to answer a
+question that a single `var_dump()` settles in five seconds is not a better
+workflow, it is a worse one.
+
+The line is roughly this: printing suits a question you already know the shape of.
+The moment you find yourself moving the call around, adding a second one, or running
+it a third time to see what changed, you have stopped answering a question and
+started searching. That is what the debugger is for, and it will be faster from the
+second run onwards.
+
+## Worth reconsidering
+
+If printing is your whole workflow, it is likely because of how debuggers used to
+be, not because of a comparison you have made recently. That is a reasonable way to
+have ended up here — the tools really were not good enough, and the habit really did
+work.
+
+The next time you reach for `dd()`, consider setting a breakpoint instead and seeing
+how far it gets you. Start your editor listening, put a breakpoint on the line you
+would have dumped from, and look around when it stops. There is nothing to install
+and nothing to turn on.
+
+If you have not tried it since the tooling got better, it is worth one afternoon to
+find out.
@@ -38,6 +38,7 @@ const sidebars = {
         'user-guide/step-debugging',
         'user-guide/inspect-variables',
         'user-guide/watches-and-edits',
+        'user-guide/stop-using-dd',
         'user-guide/logging',
         'user-guide/troubleshooting',
       ],