Debugging code often involves adding breaks or output statements to track changes and make sure that what you think is going on is really going on in your code. A number of times I simply wished for the ability to see the values of all the variables in an object all at once and in one place so that I could keep an eye on them without copious print statements. This desire was the origin of the object browser. It takes advantage of the trusting Java virtual machine and it can display all the public and private data that is part of an object.