For embedded, I do a huge part of on-system debugging using print statements.

It really isn't so easy to say what method is fast or slow. Many times, the thing I'm interested in only happens on the 517th turn of the loop _if_ variable x has one special value and variable y is larger than x. I might have to add a special code block to capture this because the ICE can't do it in hw - but if I do add a special code block, it is often enough to add a print inside it while I'm there.

The bad thing with an using a graphical debugger is that it is so easy to just switch to debugging. So people tends to spend a lot of time in the debugger instead of thinking. Just looking at the code and thinking can get 90% of the bugs, and a couple of print statements can pick a large number of the remaining 10%.

Having a graphical GUI is a bit like having a garbabe-collecting memory manager. People tends to rely on the tool instead of thinking.

I think people should have a reasonably complete tool chest - and the access to an ICE is part of that. But people shouldn't be so quick to go for their ICE.