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Comment by shawndrost | Hacker News Reader

Javascript's secret weapon[1] -- especially for beginning programmers -- is its dev tools. If you learn JS' debugging toolkit early on, it will accelerate your learning in general. I recommend Code School's "Discover DevTools" course [2] for beginning devs, but I'm not aware of a high-quality introduction for experienced devs.

Shameless plug: I teach at a school for JS devs named Hack Reactor. If rewriting Underscore as a learning tool sounds like fun, you should apply. http://hackreactor.com

[1] until now. [2] Chapters 3-4. http://discover-devtools.codeschool.com/chapters/3

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Indeed. Learning that

    debugger;

will stop the interpreter at any point you like, with console scoped at that point, has sped up my JS'ing greatly

Wait you can what!?? Holy moly, I've been writing JS for like 3 years now and I never knew this.

Yep - as long as dev tools are open. Works everywhere, even in eg. underscore templates, backbone init functions..

chrome extension content scripts...

You should watch Discover DevTools then.

Holy shit! I've been programming in JavaScript for years and never heard about the debugger statement. This looks great for really understanding the details of JavaScript's object model.

Doesn't a breakpoint do exactly the same thing?

Yep! I find it easier to use the debugger statement though when changing code a lot. Also, some places like compiled templates are difficult to set the breakpoint so it's useful there too.

Also that little stop sign shaped pause button in Chrome will 'Pause on all exceptions' (blue) or 'Pause on all uncaught exceptions' (purple, I usually leave it on this).

Just watch out, we get these committed semi-frequently. Whoops!

I've been reading up on all of the hacker schools (Dev Bootcamp, App Academy, etc.) and I was really excited to find out about Hack Reactor: I have very minimal programming experience, but have found JavaScript a pleasure to work with.

I look forward to applying to Hack Reactor when it's financially feasible! :)

What exactly do you mean with "dev tools"? Any specific browser?

The Developer Tools feature built into modern browsers (Chrome/Safari/FF/IE8+/probably others). Extremely useful when debugging JS. I know the Chrome one also allows remote debugging of your web site/app on Android.

Chrome instructions - https://developers.google.com/chrome-developer-tools/docs/ov... ... others are easy enough to find

Just whatever you do, remove the debugger (and console.log) statements before committing/deploying!!! I've seen this too many times and it's not nice when you end up throwing exceptions in older browsers that have no idea what these statements mean.

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