This talk will demonstrate the benefits of using Xdebug to debug PHP, why it beats the pants off of `var_dump()`, and how it has helped, and continues to help me become a better developer. I’ll talk a bit about what Xdebug is, how it works, and a few common scenarios where Xdebug has helped me to solve problems and gain a better understanding of how various tools work together. I’ll be running Xdebug on a Vagrant box and using PHP Storm for my demonstration. I will cover: 1. How to quickly configure a project to use Xdebug 2. How to set break points and step through code execution 3. How to inspect variables 4. How to use the console to evaluate expressions Xdebug isn’t hard to use, and once you’ve used it you’ll wonder how you ever lived without it.

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