Is there any "visual debugger" for Java? [closed]

Question

Is there any debugger for Java that shows step-by-step animation of what actually happens when some lines of codes are run?

My friend is asking a lot of Java questions and I'm not sure about the communication right now...

(I'm not even sure about what I'm saying T.T)

Thank you!

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I think the question is not so clear to everyone here...

I don't want ANY debugger here - I already know about eclipse's debugger and etc.

I'm wondering whether anyone made a debugger that shows PICTURES and animations...

I'm trying to teach a guy and thought it would be really good to have a tool that can explain things graphically.

(eclipse debugger - it's all about text. I don't think it's very effective when it comes to teaching things like recursion.)

Answer 1

There are many IDEs + debuggers out there for Java. Eclipse and NetBeans are among the most mature and popular ones.

Here's Wikipedia's comparison chart of different IDEs for Java.

Answer 2

Update: JIVE is what you are looking for.

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I'm currently working on this topic at my university and published a paper about this.

Using this approach one needs to define an abstract UML model of the application which is attached to the running application. After you attached the monitor a snapshot of the application is generated as an object diagram which can be explored. When the application is continued the dynamic part of it can be visualized as an UML sequence diagram.

My plan is to release a first version of the monitor plugin in the next weeks on Sourceforge. For now you can search the web for the keywords "runtime verification", "abstract debugging" and "runtime monitoring". Some similar approaches are referenced in the paper linked above.