Can you explain your strategies and tools for debugging JavaScript code?

How To Approach: Associate

  1. Discuss professional experience in JavaScript debugging.
  2. Share your preferred tools; explain their utility.
  3. Provide a real-world example of a complex debugging scenario.
  4. Detail the debugging process and result achieved.

Sample Response: Associate

As a JavaScript developer at SoftWeb Solutions, part of my daily task involves debugging our application code. My primary debugging tools are the Chrome Developer Tools and the Node.js debugger, which I prefer for its robust feature set.

Once, we encountered an issue where our application was sporadically crashing without clear error messages. I started with Chrome Devtools to analyze the client-side code, which didn’t show any problematic areas. So, I shifted focus to the server-side Node.js code. Using the Node.js debugger, I introduced breakpoints at several critical parts of the code where I suspected the sources of error might be. Eventually, I identified that a remote API call was occasionally timing out and returning an undefined object which was causing the crash. We added a timeout error handler and better data validation to handle such scenarios in future, resolving the issue.