New Feature Announcement: Debugger Built-in to the IDE

Back to Community

edited Dec 5, 2014

We've all struggled at times to debug an algorithm with logging and limited information. That just got significantly easier with the additional of a brand new debugger in the IDE.

This should make testing and debugging your code easier by allowing you to explore exactly what is going on in your backtest. You can set a breakpoint which will pause your backtest and allow you to track individual variables, entry conditions, exit positions, and data to see in detail how the code is executing.

Here is a quick video, showing the basic functionality and you can more read more in the documentation, or test it out in the IDE right now.

debugger

Disclaimer

The material on this website is provided for informational purposes only and does not constitute an offer to sell, a solicitation to buy, or a recommendation or endorsement for any security or strategy, nor does it constitute an offer to provide investment advisory services by Quantopian. In addition, the material offers no opinion with respect to the suitability of any security or specific investment. No information contained herein should be regarded as a suggestion to engage in or refrain from any investment-related course of action as none of Quantopian nor any of its affiliates is undertaking to provide investment advice, act as an adviser to any plan or entity subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended, individual retirement account or individual retirement annuity, or give advice in a fiduciary capacity with respect to the materials presented herein. If you are an individual retirement or other investor, contact your financial advisor or other fiduciary unrelated to Quantopian about whether any given investment idea, strategy, product or service described herein may be appropriate for your circumstances. All investments involve risk, including loss of principal. Quantopian makes no guarantees as to the accuracy or completeness of the views expressed in the website. The views are subject to change, and may have become unreliable for various reasons, including changes in market conditions or economic circumstances.

10 responses

Scott Sanderson

Sep 29, 2014

A big shoutout on this feature goes to Joe, our onetime intern and now full-time engineer who spent the summer building this feature almost entirely from scratch. This is a something we've talked about having for a long time, and we're all incredibly excited to finally have it available for everyone to use.

Disclaimer

Amir Sani

Oct 1, 2014

Wow! This is great! Thank you to JOE!!

Nathan Turner

Oct 1, 2014

Fantastic! Thank you, Joe!

Thanks Joe.

By the way, we've open-sourced the tool that powers the debugger. It's available on Github here: https://github.com/quantopian/qdb, and we have a Show HN up here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8395258. By default it ships with a command-line client that plugs into Emacs. Our IDE adds custom display logic, but it speaks the same protocol as the example client in the repo.

Disclaimer