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Chrome developer tools to master

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Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#81

Post by [deleted] »

barbegal wrote: post #15
judofyr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can’t you just ask them if they have experience with the Chrome debugger? And if that’s such a deal breaker for you, you can teach them in the first week? I mean, it’s not like the Chrome debugger is such a complicated beast. Even if you have no experience with it, you can probably learn 90% of the useful tricks in a few hours.

But if they don't know how to use the Chrome debugger then that probably correlates to not being able to do many other tasks. That few hours just teaching them how to use Chrome debugger turns into weeks of teaching them how to do lots of tasks. I have nothing against teaching new hires but for some businesses it is a significant cost so it makes sense to weed out applicants that won't be able to get stuck in straigh…

[deleted]

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#82

Post by 0xfeba »

judofyr wrote: post #37
0xfeba wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do. I just verify. They can also use Firefox or any other browser's tools if they are more comfortable. We are not hiring junior devs, and even if so I would still probably ask. But experienced front end devs should know how to use a browser's debugger. Like others said, it's a flag that they potentially don't have problem solving skills. I mean, if they put a single console.log near what they think is going wrong…

Ah, that's good to hear. Sorry for the rant, and for interpreting you in the most negative way. As I've mentioned downthread, I've just annoyed with silly, definite, interviewing questions that's more like a trap and less like a discussion.

I've been through (and hell, am going through) interviews that were stupid trick questions. I distinctly remember one startup in NYC that gave me a simple JS whiteboard question, then some super difficult Google question that required backtracking, memoization, etc.

After thinking about it, and getting berated every 2 minutes with "Do you have a solution or not" I gave them a generic overview of what I would do (eg. Brute force would be to do this, a recursive call to obtain these subparts, then memoize those, etc.) but said I could not do it on a whiteboard.

I then met their asshole CTO and got berated for working for the defense industry ("What good have they ever accomplished with technology?" was I think a rhetorical question, not a trick one...) and asked to see myself out. Good god that was the worst interview I ever had.

Anyway, the interviews I have had recently are mostly just talking about specific language details, or HackerRank challenges. Which while sometimes has annoying "gotcha" problems, are mostly FizzBuzz type deals that I can live with.

So I try to imagine myself as the nervous interviewer and stick with basics. Do you know what debugging is? Can you eliminate possibilities? And I try to get a sense for how they approach coding. Keep in mind I have to make a decision after a 30-60 minute phone call, and then a 30-45 minute interview.

Yeah it's super unscientific but my boss would rather we just "talk" to them and hire them just off that. Which explains many of the problems our company has...

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#83

Post by nojvek »

0xfeba wrote: post #68
tchaffee wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know Chrome debugger because one of the first things I did was to get VS Code to control Chrome debugger so I can set breakpoints while looking at code with the font and highlighting I'm familiar with. Weeding out applicants is dangerous if you're not trying hard to disprove first impressions or wrong answers.

If you could explain or show how you connected VS code to act as the debugger for Chrome I would let you and you could use VS code instead. I would also be impressed. I didn't mean to imply they had to use Chrome.

I’m one of the contributors to VScode chrome debug.

If someone used vscode to debug chrome in an interview and explained how the debugger itself is a dumb extension that translates JSON RPC based vscode debug protocol to JSON rpc based chrome remote protocol under the hood, I would be super duper impressed.

Although console.log isn’t a terrible debugging strategy.

My first thing to learn in any language is how to do a printf

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#84

Post by dang »

NVRM wrote: post #78
swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #42

Chrome developer tools is just a godsend. Its so much better than any other debugger I've worked with, and miles better than firefox debugging tool I personally use a chromium based browser called slimjet to do all of my development. It runs off v55 I think which is like 5 versions behind chrome. But its nice to have a dedicated app for debugging. One tool that I find I use everyday is this: http://lab.maltewasserman…

Wrong. Try again.

Please don't post unsubstantive comments here.

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#85

Post by ramblerman »

0xfeba wrote: post #3

I implemented two simple interview tests in order to weed out people who can't do simple debugging. In one, I hand them my laptop and give them a basic create-react-app sample that uses fetch on a remote URL, but there's a typo in the URL. I tell them it's supposed to fetch a remote REST API and parse the JSON but it doesn't work--how would you fix it? So far, two ways to pass: Just look at the source code, or use th…

> So far, the test seems to work well.

How would you know.

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#86

Post by bryanrasmussen »

jasonkostempski wrote: post #63
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I prefer console logs to the debugger for the following reason - I tend to know about where the problem is. I've been working on this code, I know it's a couple things that could be breaking it in the way it's breaking. I prefer to console.log those things because I find stepping through code tedious, though I understand some people would prefer to use the debugger. If on the other hand it is code I don't know anythi…

You can make a conditional break point, put in arbitray js statements, such as console.log, and return false if you dont want to pause there. Best of both worlds and you dont have to clean up the code after.

I was thinking more of a specialized console in the browser where you could write code sort of like the following:

let b = new BreakPoint();

let start = codebase.find('let creditrating');

let end = codebase.find(functionExit('chanceToPurchaseSet'));

let report = new Reporter();

report.preamble = 'line ' + start.lineNumber + ' in file ' + start.codeFile;

report.ending = '-------------------';

report.bindTo(b.reports);

b.reportOn(['undefined','null',b.error]);

start.setBreakpoint(b);

start.runUntil(end);

with of course requisite functionality to do stuff like save scripts, run a saved script, history of reports etc.

on edit: improved formatting

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#88

Post by LiquidFlux »

kclay wrote: post #40

Can someone explain why the chrome browser simulator is so bad. I recently had to do some web work, normally don't deal with HTML . Anyways I tried to use the emulate view to test against iOS devices. Had QA test on a real device and it was all wrong. Ended up just getting a virtualbox of osx up to run the stimulator. Normally it isn't a problem using it but trying to line up slanted designs with pixel perfect placem…

My understanding is that Chrome emulates viewports and little more, it doesn't support different rendering engines and such.

You should use it to understand what various mobile devices might look like, great for prototyping, but it doesn't replace physical or truly virtualised devices ( as a service / VMs ) for testing.

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#89

Post by augbog »

0xfeba wrote: post #3

I implemented two simple interview tests in order to weed out people who can't do simple debugging. In one, I hand them my laptop and give them a basic create-react-app sample that uses fetch on a remote URL, but there's a typo in the URL. I tell them it's supposed to fetch a remote REST API and parse the JSON but it doesn't work--how would you fix it? So far, two ways to pass: Just look at the source code, or use th…

doesn't the console tell you an error happens when trying to make that request? unless the typo URL is actually a valid URL that returns a 200 response

Re: Chrome developer tools to master

#90

Post by 0xfeba »

pvg wrote: post #79
0xfeba wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so far That is, the people who start entering in console.logs, are entering them in in random places, not really troubleshooting.

Right but 'so far' for such a hazing interview setup doesn't say much. You handed the candidate your laptop and a bug they don't know from Adam (is it some tricky shadowed var thing? Weird truthiness thing? It's a dumb typo! But only you know that) and are hovering over their shoulder and harumphing when they start typing 'console.'. Or you tell them they're doing it wrong if they start checking something only you al…

Yeah, a 25 line debugging question and a 25 line react .setState() question are far from hazing. See my other comment for a good example of hazing:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17495049

In any case, unfortunately it's something I have to do. And these are the 10% of people that pass a phone screen. We have too many unqualified candidates coming in. As I mentioned in another question -- I have no control over the pool of candidates we get. I'm sure it does screen out people who don't do well under pressure, but oh well, as long as the people who make it through can work on the team I'd say it works.

If you have a better way I can implement within a 30-45 minute in person interview, I'm all ears.

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