Debugging with var_dump ( or dd in laravel ) can get us what we need to know most of the time, however it means we need to edit the files ( which can cause unneeded version updates in VCS repositories ) and is often like chasing a worm through the soil, it just gets a bit messy. XDebug provides a very useful tool window in PHPStorm that shows us what ALL variables are set to, can show the method call stack ( list of all files and functions called before a certain point ), and can also help us hunt down code that should be optimized.
In a quest to learn XDebug with PHPStorm there’s quite a few tutorials on how to install, but finding clear teaching on how to use is a bit harder. Here’s some of the best resources I found for how to use XDebug with PHPStorm.