printf-debugging

printf-debugging is pretty useful in situations where you want to understand the behavior of a function or a group of functions over a certain action. in such cases, you can't really use a debugger and set breakpoints specially if the interaction involves cursor as the debugger will keep breaking at the set breakpoints and you would have to either change window focus or move your cursor to the debugger controls.

for javascript, looking at the the logs in the console below while interacting with the user interface elements is a nice way to see the state of various variables in real time. though one needs to carefully decide what they want to log and what not because these logs pile up really fast. ideally i prefer 5-6 lines of logs per interaction "while trying to understand/debug".