3 ms·

We have the most sophisticated tools ever, in the history of man-kind. The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used

We have the most sophisticated tools ever, in the history of man-kind. The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used 20 years ago. Programmers have very weak institutional memory. And the real problem is not Javascript, is not, really. The problem is the HTTP + HTML model. It no longer works. And we work around it the wrong way. I disagree strongly with this. We know how to use HTML and http very effectively. And there are ways to address the UX shortcomings of standard HTML that avoid writing reams of JavaScript. People underestimate HTML.

samspenc 10y ago
> The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used 20 years ago. I've used both the Chrome debugger and the VB debugger (so you know how old I am!) and I won't speak to your comment directly, but... You have no idea how many times the Chrome JS debugger has saved my rear. :) I've been able to fix JS issues that used to take hours to debug in a few minutes since Chrome came out with its JS debugger. Firefox and IE's debuggers have gotten better - but not as good as Chrome's. And the reason I think JS debuggers aren't as good as, say, VB or Java's, is, IMHO, purely a language issue. With an interpreted language like Javascript that allows re-definition of any function or object ("prototype") or variable, I don't think the debugging tools can get any better until the language changes (which, as the author points out, is a hard sell.)
- carsongross 10y ago
  Oh, absolutely: the Chrome debugger is the best of the bunch and a huge step forward from where we were a few years ago. On the other hand, it shows just how little historical knowledge programmers have that many people don't recognize that it isn't better than technology from decades ago.

3 ms·

We have the most sophisticated tools ever, in the history of man-kind. The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used

by carsongross 10y ago

samspenc 10y ago
> The debugger I use in Chrome is a worse experience than the Visual Basic debugger I used 20 years ago. I've used both the Chrome debugger and the VB debugger (so you know how old I am!) and I won't speak to your comment directly, but... You have no idea how many times the Chrome JS debugger has saved my rear. :) I've been able to fix JS issues that used to take hours to debug in a few minutes since Chrome came out with its JS debugger. Firefox and IE's debuggers have gotten better - but not as good as Chrome's. And the reason I think JS debuggers aren't as good as, say, VB or Java's, is, IMHO, purely a language issue. With an interpreted language like Javascript that allows re-definition of any function or object ("prototype") or variable, I don't think the debugging tools can get any better until the language changes (which, as the author points out, is a hard sell.)
- carsongross 10y ago
  Oh, absolutely: the Chrome debugger is the best of the bunch and a huge step forward from where we were a few years ago. On the other hand, it shows just how little historical knowledge programmers have that many people don't recognize that it isn't better than technology from decades ago.