It's funny how CheatEngine seems to see a lot of use as a legit "professional" dev tool. I personally don't use it because I don't run Windows a whole lot but I've had a few bug reports on github where people would use CheatEngine to investigate bugs even though the code was fully available so you could use any full-featured debugger instead.
I suspect that some younger developers simply started tinkering with CheatEngine before they learned proper programming so they feel very comfortable using it instead of a regular debugger. I started programming by tinkering with BASIC game listings so I feel a certain kinship with this approach.
Also CheatEngine is probably easier to set up and will work regardless of whether you have access to the source or not. And unlike more advanced tools like IDA you don't have to worry about expensive license or pirating since it's free and open source.
That being said if you're reporting bugs on open source projects on GH please try to use more appropriate debugging tools, I don't know what to do when somebody starts posting dumps of the Windows VM address space to show me how something isn't working as it should...
Tells you that people with a goal to accomplish don't need to have their tools dumbed down for them, despite what modern UX trends would have you believe.
GDB is an absolute nightmare to use with Asm, it's almost like it was designed to discourage it. Look up the absolutely perplexing behaviour of the "disassemble" command[1] for one example --- the first time I encountered it, I exclaimed "WTF!?" out loud.
WinDbg, and DOS's DEBUG that came before it, feel far more natural with such (and the former can also debug at source-level.)
[1] "No function contains specified address." -- when there is absolutely no requirement for anything to resemble a function in order to be capable of being disassembled.
Hit a breakpoint? My fingers are already typing x/10i. LLDB does stupid things otherwise as well (I think it will automatically "move your cursor down"?) so this is just the command I always reach for.
Yeah by default gdb sucks a bit for assembly, fortunately it's easily scriptable so I have a file with a bunch of functions to make it behave a bit more reasonably.
If you're on Mac, I remember using Bit Slicer with great success sometime last year for similar purposes and intent (easy GUI to poke around in memory.)
I suspect that some younger developers simply started tinkering with CheatEngine before they learned proper programming so they feel very comfortable using it instead of a regular debugger. I started programming by tinkering with BASIC game listings so I feel a certain kinship with this approach.
Also CheatEngine is probably easier to set up and will work regardless of whether you have access to the source or not. And unlike more advanced tools like IDA you don't have to worry about expensive license or pirating since it's free and open source.
That being said if you're reporting bugs on open source projects on GH please try to use more appropriate debugging tools, I don't know what to do when somebody starts posting dumps of the Windows VM address space to show me how something isn't working as it should...