We saw this thread a while ago but Google Alert keeps sending emails about it. Hi Cypherrage, thanks for agreeing with us that Simulator for Arduino is the #1 ranked Arduino Simulator. If I wanted an alternative, then Visual Studio and Eclipse would be the first ones that come to mind. I use the Arduino IDE not because it's good (it's pretty appalling) but because it's convenient, and good enough that it's not worth the bother of looking for an alternative. Then again, for some types of problem simple trace statements actually are the easiest way to solve the problem, and even when emulators and debuggers and so on are available they would be the wrong tool for the job.

That convenience gets more important when you're dealing with large complex applications, but Arduino sketches are teeny tiny little things in software terms and hardly justify effort making debugging more convenient, especially since the compile/build/test process is so quick and easy. Where more sophisticated debugging tools are available such as simulators and emulators and source level interactive debuggers and so on these make it more convenient to do the things that you can do with print statements, but that's all. With the right mindset and some patience, almost any problem can be found using this. The ability to get output from print statements makes it possible to debug almost anything, and is available in almost all development environments, so this is pretty much the lowest common denominator. I've lost count of the number of development environments and emulators and simulators and debuggers that I've used over the years.

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