Christian Heilmann

New article: “Beyond console.log() – level up your debugging skills”

Tuesday, March 9th, 2021 at 12:41 pm

Today, Sitepoint released an article they commissioned me to write a few weeks ago that a lot of work went into and I’m happy with the result. In Beyond console.log – level up your debugging skills I describe a few features of Chromium browser developer tools and how they interact with Visual Studio Code.

syncing changes with workspaces

I cover the following topics/features:

  • Getting more information in your console.log() statements by wrapping values with curly braces
  • Formatting/converting log values with specifiers, for example console.log(‘%ix %s developer’, 10, ‘console’) resulting in “10x console developer”
  • Grouping logging statements
  • Using console.info(), console.warn() and console.error() to allow for filtering
  • Timing things with console.time() and counting with console.count()
  • Using live expressions to avoid slowing down your debugging with tons of log messages
  • Using Console utilities
    and built-in convenience methods like $() or monitor()
  • Using console.table() to display information, f.e. can you guess what console.table($$(‘img:not([src^=data])’), [‘src’,’alt’]) does?
  • Moving from Console to Sources
  • Using the Command Menu to access functionality faster
  • Storing your DOM manipulation scripts in Sources fo easier re-use
  • Enhancing third party websites with Overrides
  • Syncing changes you do in Developer tools live with your editor using Workspaces
  • Using the browser developer tools in Visual Studio code using the Edge Devtools for VS Code extension
  • Moving on to breakpoint debugging

VS Code Devtools extension

Go read the full article on Sitepoint

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Newsletter

Check out the Dev Digest Newsletter I write every week for WeAreDevelopers. Latest issues:

160: Graphs and RAGs explained and VS Code extension hacks Graphs and RAG explained, how AI is reshaping UI and work, how to efficiently use Cursor, VS Code extensions security issues.
159: AI pipelines, 10x faster TypeScript, How to interview How to use LLMs to help you write code and how much electricity does that use? Is your API secure? 10x faster TypeScript thanks to Go!
158: 🕹️ Super Mario AI 🔑 API keys in LLMs 🤙🏾 Vibe Coding Why is AI playing Super Mario? How is hallucinating the least of our worries and what are rules for developing Safety Critical Code?
157: CUDA in Python, Gemini Code Assist and back-dooring LLMs We met with a CUDA expert from NVIDIA about the future of hardware, we look at how AI fails and how to play pong on 140 browser tabs.
156: Enterprise dead, all about Bluesky and React moves on! Learn about Bluesky as a platform, how to build a React App and how to speed up SQL. And play an impossible game in the browser.

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