Show HN: RootCause – Record, Replay and Reproduce JavaScript Errors

[0]: https://logrocket.com/

For error tracking I've previously used Sentry [0]. I found it really easy to use and setup in a fairly large JS app. The best part is that it's open source, so you always have the option of hosting it yourself, which removes any fear of vendor lock-in. I'd say it's well worth paying for their SaaS offering.

EDIT: Looking through the docs, it seems they expect you to load their non-versioned third-party sourced script, and it's not even hosted on a CDN. That's a huge security risk, so it's an immediate blacklist for me.

[0] https://sentry.io/welcome/

I am not sure how I feel about these session recorders and probably want to start blocking them from my browser. It is akin to someone recording your every movement inside your house and watching the video to see what issues come up. Oh and you have no idea its happening.

Also wonder about how this data is protected. If videos of how I used Facebook were leaked (messages I started to type but didnt send for instance) it would be a huge violation of my privacy.

In the same token, its like free UX research, you can see where people struggle by watching them use the app. It is like standing over someone's shoulder to see how they are using the product and helps immensely in that realm. I still feel like it should be opt in though.

The best error handling technique is to catch exceptions and show up a big popup on the screen with the error details.

Your users will send those details to you instead of just saying "the app crashed".

In a reasonable language, you do something obviously wrong, and it throws an exception immediately, which gives you a stack trace that gives reasonable context for understanding what went wrong.

In JavaScript, the failure often happens silently: "foo" + 1 returns "foo1", {}.foo returns undefined, and program execution continues until it absolutely can't, finally failing far away from where the problem occurred. And when it does fail, it often fails in a callback deep within framework code with no clear, traceable execution path that leads back to the point where the error occurred. The errors have all the mysteriousness of C errors, without even the traceability.

The JavaScript community doesn't seem to be aware that there are better solutions, and seem happy with the way things are, even going so far as to use JavaScript on servers where far better tools exist. It seems that the only salvation that will come will be when mature tools exist on top of WebAssembly so that those of us who care about error reporting can use better toolchains.