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Show HN: Videobug – The time travel debugger for JVM

Hi All, this is Shardul here - I am the co-founder of Videobug. https://bug.video We are super excited to share Videobug with you. Videobug records run time code execution so that developers can watch it line by line as frequently as they want, right in their IDE. It takes away the pain of recreating exact conditions that led to a bug and saves developer time in every bug squash. Parth (my co-founder) and I have worked on multiple production grade applications in startups and enterprises. We used Logrocket, Sentry, and Datadog for logging and found ourselves adding more logs after a bug is found. Adding accurate logs required disciplined engineering and collaboration across teams. Time to connect these logs to what’s wrong in the code, took quite sometime. Videobug logs everything automatically. We are super psyched to launch our offline version. We plan to launch a fully self hosted version in 4 weeks from now, which will allow you to record and replay code executions in your staging and production environments. We are looking for product feedback. Here is a 2 min demo explaining how to use Videobug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53IQifMt54 Join our discord channel to share your feedback or in case you need support. https://discord.gg/Hhwvay8uTa P.S. Please note that we collect the following analytics data from your IDE: Your computer hostname, debugging events such as “started debugger”, “fetched exceptions” and “searched for code execution”.

artpar 4y ago
Hi, I am Parth, the other cofounder. Debugging and catching bugs has always been a fun game for me, but as the team size grows it becomes very tidious 1. Run into too many “works-on-my-machine-but-not-in-production” cases. 2. Logical errors were hard to catch with logging tools. We often added more logs to trace back where the issue was. This involved several production deployments. 3. Race conditions were rare and hard to recreate, and remained unresolved for days. Combing through logs for days was frustrating. 4. Logging tools offered stacktrace for crashes - we needed to figure what data led to these crashes. This was time-consuming. Adding the links here again to make them clickable for mobile users https://bug.video https://bug.video 2 min demo explaining how to use Videobug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53IQifMt54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53IQifMt54 discord channel https://discord.gg/Hhwvay8uTa https://discord.gg/Hhwvay8uTa
- kjeetgill 4y ago
  I'm excited to check this out! I remember hearing about Chronon, another time traveling debugger for the JVM way, way back but no idea what happened to it. Were you familiar with or inspired by it? Can't even figure out if it still exists.
  - artpar 4y ago
    yes chronon did come up in our initial research. I was not able to obtain a copy of their software to try out. But yeah definitely the same goal. It seems pretty much dead though, here is a page from the way back machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180118111950/chrononsystems.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180118111950/chrononsystems.co...
- soco 4y ago
  Any comparison to BugJail? https://bugjail.com https://bugjail.com
  - artpar 4y ago
    So from what I can make of it, this is very similar to what we are doing in terms of the goal. The only difference which I am thinking here is (based on just their front page), seems they are recording only function parameters and return values. If that understanding is correct, videobug is recording down to local variable level data (so lets say if you return a list from a db query and iterate over it in your business logic function, you will be able to see execution inside the loop. Also, in the FAQ, it says the pre-production/production env is likely to be years away. While we are very early, we are definitely aiming videobug in pre-production to begin with.
mohanarpit 4y ago
I think this is a very interesting concept. Will definitely shorten the REPL cycle from reporting a bug to recreating it in the code. I can see this being useful in QA and staging environments. Looking forward to the self hosted version for security reasons.
- artpar 4y ago
  Hi Mohan You can safely try out the current version. It is completely offline and there is no need for internet to use it. The analytics point called out are FYI because this sits inside your IDE. And we are very much in consideration whether to keep them or not.
  - TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
    > whether to keep them or not Why host name??
    - artpar 4y ago
      To get an approximate count of users and where they might be stuck in using the plugin.
- shardullavekar 4y ago
  Thanks Arpit, in the next release we plan to have collaboration features where customers or QAs can share Videobug session with devs directly. It will short circuit the whole bug raising Jira/Slack cycle.
zyl1n 4y ago
What's the oldest version of JDK supported for this?
- artpar 4y ago
  We have tested with 1.8 and above.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
skadamat 4y ago
This looks neat! I just watched Alan Kay's recent talk at GOTO Conference "Is Software Engineering Still an Oxymoron" and this tool reminds me a bit of the CAD -> SIM -> FAB part of his talk: https://youtu.be/D43PlUr1x_E?t=2034 https://youtu.be/D43PlUr1x_E?t=2034
ratpik 4y ago
This can definitely help shorten the time to debug, especially for the hard to debug customer specific issues. Looking forward to this!
- shardullavekar 4y ago
  Thanks! Let us know your feedback, the product is live here https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18529-videobug https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18529-videobug
brainfreezed 4y ago
Great work guys ! This product has a lot of potential and on top of that it makes the life of devs easier !!
- shardullavekar 4y ago
  thanks! do try out the product and let us know your feedback on our discord channel.

artpar 4y ago

Hi, I am Parth, the other cofounder. Debugging and catching bugs has always been a fun game for me, but as the team size grows it becomes very tidious 1. Run into too many “works-on-my-machine-but-not-in-production” cases. 2. Logical errors were hard to catch with logging tools. We often added more logs to trace back where the issue was. This involved several production deployments. 3. Race conditions were rare and hard to recreate, and remained unresolved for days. Combing through logs for days was frustrating. 4. Logging tools offered stacktrace for crashes - we needed to figure what data led to these crashes. This was time-consuming. Adding the links here again to make them clickable for mobile users https://bug.video https://bug.video 2 min demo explaining how to use Videobug. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53IQifMt54 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U53IQifMt54 discord channel https://discord.gg/Hhwvay8uTa https://discord.gg/Hhwvay8uTa

kjeetgill 4y ago
I'm excited to check this out! I remember hearing about Chronon, another time traveling debugger for the JVM way, way back but no idea what happened to it. Were you familiar with or inspired by it? Can't even figure out if it still exists.
- artpar 4y ago
  yes chronon did come up in our initial research. I was not able to obtain a copy of their software to try out. But yeah definitely the same goal. It seems pretty much dead though, here is a page from the way back machine https://web.archive.org/web/20180118111950/chrononsystems.com/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180118111950/chrononsystems.co...
soco 4y ago
Any comparison to BugJail? https://bugjail.com https://bugjail.com
- artpar 4y ago
  So from what I can make of it, this is very similar to what we are doing in terms of the goal. The only difference which I am thinking here is (based on just their front page), seems they are recording only function parameters and return values. If that understanding is correct, videobug is recording down to local variable level data (so lets say if you return a list from a db query and iterate over it in your business logic function, you will be able to see execution inside the loop. Also, in the FAQ, it says the pre-production/production env is likely to be years away. While we are very early, we are definitely aiming videobug in pre-production to begin with.

mohanarpit 4y ago

I think this is a very interesting concept. Will definitely shorten the REPL cycle from reporting a bug to recreating it in the code. I can see this being useful in QA and staging environments. Looking forward to the self hosted version for security reasons.

artpar 4y ago
Hi Mohan You can safely try out the current version. It is completely offline and there is no need for internet to use it. The analytics point called out are FYI because this sits inside your IDE. And we are very much in consideration whether to keep them or not.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y ago
  > whether to keep them or not Why host name??
  - artpar 4y ago
    To get an approximate count of users and where they might be stuck in using the plugin.
shardullavekar 4y ago
Thanks Arpit, in the next release we plan to have collaboration features where customers or QAs can share Videobug session with devs directly. It will short circuit the whole bug raising Jira/Slack cycle.

zyl1n 4y ago

What's the oldest version of JDK supported for this?

artpar 4y ago
We have tested with 1.8 and above.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

skadamat 4y ago

This looks neat! I just watched Alan Kay's recent talk at GOTO Conference "Is Software Engineering Still an Oxymoron" and this tool reminds me a bit of the CAD -> SIM -> FAB part of his talk: https://youtu.be/D43PlUr1x_E?t=2034 https://youtu.be/D43PlUr1x_E?t=2034

ratpik 4y ago

This can definitely help shorten the time to debug, especially for the hard to debug customer specific issues. Looking forward to this!

shardullavekar 4y ago
Thanks! Let us know your feedback, the product is live here https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18529-videobug https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/18529-videobug

brainfreezed 4y ago

Great work guys ! This product has a lot of potential and on top of that it makes the life of devs easier !!

shardullavekar 4y ago
thanks! do try out the product and let us know your feedback on our discord channel.