5 ms·

I have an error reporter in my app and it is completely useless. Stacktraces are usually just starting within some library and never touch app code. I rarely kn

I have an error reporter in my app and it is completely useless. Stacktraces are usually just starting within some library and never touch app code. I rarely know where the error started, I just have to guess. It sucks.

kristopolous 8y ago
This is excessively common. Somehow modern debugging is essentially as nuanced as "shit broke". Debugging was far better 20+ years ago under C++ in win32 then it is today - there was working code navigation as well. I don't know how we have fallen so far back in the tooling.
- ehnto 8y ago
  PHP debugging is fine. Conditional breakpoints, walking up the stack trace, interactive and in-place code execution at run-time meaning I can run code or change variables and it applies to the current execution. It's great. Javascript is a nightmare to debug, but it's probably just as much to do with architecture than debugging tools. Of course it's hard to debug a dozen tiny libraries written in ES6, transpiled down to ES5, packed into a module loader and flung around asyncronously. JS debugging is fine in native, dependency free code I write. My sense is that debugging was something a lot of newer developers found out about later in their education and as such they never noticed debuggability and tooling wasn't up to par with older tooling.
  - kristopolous 8y ago
    Python and perl are good too. I've heard marvelous things about emacs consistent uniform debugging interface that takes care of the magic behind the scenes. In so much as my friend just gets debugging as a built-in feature when he transits around languages without any knowledge of the underlying invocation and implementation nuances. He has the same keystrokes and interface in all the common languages. It sounds magnificent. One day I hope to actually take the time to learn it.
    - etatoby 8y ago
      I found it extremely hard to learn Emacs and memorize all the keystrokes. They made no sense. After some time I gave up. Learning Vim was a breeze compared to it.
- spockz 8y ago
  Debugging Java/Scala works really nice in IntelliJ. It also has support for asynchronous stack traces which means to say that stack traces are carried over asynchronous boundaries. It even works for callbacks. Edit: Having said this, I still rely more on creating test cases to capture what I think should happen instead of stepping through the code in a white box way.
- tobyhinloopen 8y ago
  I'm also writing a C app as a hobby. Somehow LLDB is an excellent debugger in my hobby app. Same with Swift (iOS) development.
wongarsu 8y ago
Stack traces for async code are always borderline useless in Javascript. Instead of telling me who called the offending code it just informs me that the code is executed by an scheduler in the event loop.
- z3t4 8y ago
  You create the error before doing the async operation, then throw/callback that error with additional info from the async error.
  - wongarsu 8y ago
    That sounds tedious in a web server where like half the functions are async. Also why is that my responsibility? A stack trace is supposed to show the call chain, not language implementation details. At a minimum `async x()` should just be equivalent to `try { async x() } catch(err) { throw new Error(err) }` (with the logger printing all nested exceptions)
    - z3t4 8y ago
      Most of the time you will get the correct call chain, so you only have to do this rarely.
- slaymaker1907 8y ago
  One feature of CUDA that is nice is that while you can use streams to do stuff asynchronously, you can make it synchronous for easier debugging by setting a flag. Unfortunately, I don’t think something like this is possible with JS promises since new Promise() is guaranteed to execute in a different iteration of the event loop.
- vimslayer 8y ago
  Are you transpiling your async functions away? IIRC there's been a lot of work on async function stack traces in V8 but it's obviously useless if they are compiled to some state machine monstrosoty before getting executed.
quickthrower2 8y ago
Yep, unfortunately you have to consider any NPM (or whatever) libraries as your code, your responsibility & your problem. You might need to get/build source maps for those and debug them to see why it is falling over.
deleted 8y ago
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kristopolous 8y ago

This is excessively common. Somehow modern debugging is essentially as nuanced as "shit broke". Debugging was far better 20+ years ago under C++ in win32 then it is today - there was working code navigation as well. I don't know how we have fallen so far back in the tooling.

ehnto 8y ago
PHP debugging is fine. Conditional breakpoints, walking up the stack trace, interactive and in-place code execution at run-time meaning I can run code or change variables and it applies to the current execution. It's great. Javascript is a nightmare to debug, but it's probably just as much to do with architecture than debugging tools. Of course it's hard to debug a dozen tiny libraries written in ES6, transpiled down to ES5, packed into a module loader and flung around asyncronously. JS debugging is fine in native, dependency free code I write. My sense is that debugging was something a lot of newer developers found out about later in their education and as such they never noticed debuggability and tooling wasn't up to par with older tooling.
- kristopolous 8y ago
  Python and perl are good too. I've heard marvelous things about emacs consistent uniform debugging interface that takes care of the magic behind the scenes. In so much as my friend just gets debugging as a built-in feature when he transits around languages without any knowledge of the underlying invocation and implementation nuances. He has the same keystrokes and interface in all the common languages. It sounds magnificent. One day I hope to actually take the time to learn it.
  - etatoby 8y ago
    I found it extremely hard to learn Emacs and memorize all the keystrokes. They made no sense. After some time I gave up. Learning Vim was a breeze compared to it.
spockz 8y ago
Debugging Java/Scala works really nice in IntelliJ. It also has support for asynchronous stack traces which means to say that stack traces are carried over asynchronous boundaries. It even works for callbacks. Edit: Having said this, I still rely more on creating test cases to capture what I think should happen instead of stepping through the code in a white box way.
tobyhinloopen 8y ago
I'm also writing a C app as a hobby. Somehow LLDB is an excellent debugger in my hobby app. Same with Swift (iOS) development.

wongarsu 8y ago

Stack traces for async code are always borderline useless in Javascript. Instead of telling me who called the offending code it just informs me that the code is executed by an scheduler in the event loop.

z3t4 8y ago
You create the error before doing the async operation, then throw/callback that error with additional info from the async error.
- wongarsu 8y ago
  That sounds tedious in a web server where like half the functions are async. Also why is that my responsibility? A stack trace is supposed to show the call chain, not language implementation details. At a minimum `async x()` should just be equivalent to `try { async x() } catch(err) { throw new Error(err) }` (with the logger printing all nested exceptions)
  - z3t4 8y ago
    Most of the time you will get the correct call chain, so you only have to do this rarely.
slaymaker1907 8y ago
One feature of CUDA that is nice is that while you can use streams to do stuff asynchronously, you can make it synchronous for easier debugging by setting a flag. Unfortunately, I don’t think something like this is possible with JS promises since new Promise() is guaranteed to execute in a different iteration of the event loop.
vimslayer 8y ago
Are you transpiling your async functions away? IIRC there's been a lot of work on async function stack traces in V8 but it's obviously useless if they are compiled to some state machine monstrosoty before getting executed.

quickthrower2 8y ago

Yep, unfortunately you have to consider any NPM (or whatever) libraries as your code, your responsibility & your problem. You might need to get/build source maps for those and debug them to see why it is falling over.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]