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by hmsimha 1891 days ago
When you have to debug something in postgres, are you going to communicate with it by using netcat and writing your own TCP messages by hand, or use psql? Both should work, but you wouldn't say postgres is obfuscating things intentionally so that you have to use psql (or some other postgres client). The fact of the matter is that complex tools are much more useful if they also come with tools to pave over (some of) that complexity and provide a more useful interface for developer experience.

You can debug React apps just fine without the React developer extension, but in some situations it will be much harder. And to elaborate, I work on React full-time and just use the javascript console and debug messages for 99% of my debugging.
1 comments
xyzzy_plugh 1891 days ago
The Postgres protocol is documented extremely well such that it is actually trivial to write messages by hand, and yes, I have used netcat instead of psql.

I honestly couldn't find anything remotely similar in my search for to unearth React runtime internals. Maybe I'm missing something but literally every answer was "just use the extension."

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nicoburns 1890 days ago
If you want to debug a performance issue in postgres, then the answer will be similar: "just use EXPLAIN ANALYZE". You could get out a C debugger and step through the source code, and there are cases where that is appropriate (e.g if you're working on Postgres itself, or you're trying to diagnose a bug in postgres), but if all you want to do is debug your query then you should use the postgres-specific debugging tool (EXPLAIN ANALYZE).

Same for React. If you are working on React itself, or you need diagnose an actual bug in the runtime then you'll want to use the JavaScript debugger and step through. If all you need to do is work out why your component isn't updating then you can use the React-specific tool (the extension) to make your life much easier.

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fiddlerwoaroof 1890 days ago
If you really wanted to, you could write your own renderer. there’s already several: react-dom, react-native, react-test-renderer. Also, I believe there’s at least one conference talk where a renderer was live coded
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