Ah, breakpoints. Those little digital stop signs that every front-end developer swears by. But let’s be real for a second – breakpoints are the high-maintenance divas of the debugging world. You set them up, pamper and adjust them, and what do they do? They freeze your entire application to tell you that, surprise, there’s a bug. Gee, thanks.
Now, let me introduce you to the unsung hero of the debuggers: console.log(). This little gem is the duct tape of programming. It’s not pretty, it’s not sophisticated, but damn, does it get the job done. While breakpoints are busy putting on their makeup, console.log is already out there, in the trenches, getting its hands dirty.
Console Log: The Punk Rocker of Debugging
Console.log doesn’t need your IDE’s permission to rock out. It doesn’t care about your source maps or fancy asynchronous call stacks. It just slams down a message on the console like a mic drop. Bam! There’s your problem right there in glorious monospace.
The Breakpoint Illusion
Breakpoints give you this illusion of control, like you’re some wizard stopping time. But let’s face it, you’re usually just clicking around, hoping you’ve magically landed on the right line of code. It’s like trying to catch a fly with chopsticks – sure, it looks cool when Mr. Miyagi does it, but you’re not Mr. Miyagi.
And good luck using breakpoints outside of your IDE in the browser if you don’t have your sourcemaps properly configured. It’s time to open up your Webpack configuration and scoop out a portion of your brain with a spork.
The Console Log Rebellion
Console.log is a rebellious teenager who doesn’t follow your rules. Need to track a variable? Just slap a console.log on that bad boy. Want to see if a function is being called? Console.log is your personal private investigator, ready to rat out the laziest functions in your codebase. It’s quick, it’s dirty, and it gets results.
Conclusion: The Console.log Cult
So, let’s raise a glass to console.log, the unsophisticated, unpretentious hero of debugging. While breakpoints are sipping champagne and asking for your manager, console.log is out there, getting shit done. It’s time to ditch the drama and join the console.log cult. Your sanity will thank you.
Remember, the next time you’re tempted to set a breakpoint, ask yourself: “Do I really want to go through this performance again?” If the answer is no, console.log is waiting for you, ready to welcome you to the dark side.
😄
Don’t forget to update your eslint rules, if you want to share the love with the end users as well
“no-console”: [
“error”, {
“allow”: [
“log”,
]
},
]
You nailed it, Dwayne. And one particular aspect of Javascript benefits greatly from console.log — asynchronous operations. We’ve had more than the occasional bug that were timing related, like two promises completing in a different order than expected, resulting in some piece of data not being available. Breakpoints have just as much chance of masking the problem than finding it. console.log for the win!