When we're programming it's common to have the need to quickly test and do some experiments with a piece of code.
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With client-side code it’s easy to start debugging some piece of code - just open the Chrome DevTools on any page, and start writing client-side JavaScript.
How can we do the same with Node.js code, and debug Node modules with access to the filesystem and other Node.js capabilities? It’s very simple, actually.
Open your terminal and run
node --inspect
Then in Chrome type this URL: about://inspect.
Click the Open dedicated DevTools for Node link next to the Node target, and you’ll have access to Node.js in the browser DevTools:
Make sure you click that, and not the inspect link down below, as it tool auto-reconnects to the Node.js instance when we restart it - pretty handy!
If the question is why we want to do that, it’s pretty simple: there’s no better way to debug any JavaScript code than using the DevTools and their tools. We have access to the profiler, all the stack visualization information, the code navigation facilities, a very cool debugger and much more!
One more thing! ⚠️ ✋
At the end of January I will organize the Web Development Bootcamp.
It's a 10-weeks long cohort online course where I will guide you to becominga Web Developer.
It's not "just a course". It's a bigevent I organize once a year.
We'll start from zero, learn the fundamentals of Web Development, HTML CSS, JavaScript, Tailwind, Git, using the command line, VS Code, GitHub, Node.js, we'll then learn React, JSX, how to use PostgreSQL, Astro, Next.js, Prisma, deploying on Netlify/DigitalOcean/Fly/Vercel and much more!
At the end of the first 10 weeksyou'll know how to create web sites and web applications and I'll unlock you the 2nd phase of the Bootcamp: you will get access to a large number of projects exclusive to the Bootcamp graduates, so you can follow my instructions to build things like private areas with authentication, clones of popular sites like Twitter YouTube Reddit, create e-commerce sites, and much much more.
Because once you got the fundamentals, you only learn by working on real, exciting projects.
To find out more, visit bootcamp.dev
