Why is it funny? And why do you not consider printf to be "actual" debugging? I mean, if printf wasn't available to me or was for some reason otherwise inconvenient, then I would look for other avenues to debug, perhaps by using a debugger! This isn't that mystifying.

As I said above, this is very heavily dependent on preferred workflows and what you're working on. Long ago, I remember doing some robotics work in C, and a debugger was invaluable.