Debugging Tools

Inevitably when working with new APIs you are going to run into situations where your code just is not performing, or behaving, as you intended. This could be the Facebook APIs, browser APIs, or some JavaScript library you are using on a project. When you are working with these technologies, it can be quite frustrating to figure out what is going on at what level of your code. Is it the JavaScript? Is it a response from Facebook? As your codebase grows, finding where bugs are hidden becomes more difficult, but there are some really good tools to help you figure out where your errors are happening. When developing JavaScript for a canvas game, you will want to pay attention to the JavaScript debugging tools. Because, it is hoped, you are doing some experimentation with the JavaScript canvas API, I thought it would be worth going over (briefly) some of the tools that are out there to help you write “better” code and find bugs in your codebase. I cover aspects of these tools in future chapters, but I introduce some of the tools here for the impatient.