How I Cut My Debugging Time in Half as a Front-End Developer (A Practical Guide)

Debugging is one of those things every developer secretly knows eats up far more time than we’d like to admit. Some studies estimate that up to 50% of a developer’s time is spent tracking down bugs, deciphering cryptic console messages, jumping between tools, and trying to figure out why something worked five minutes ago but doesn’t now.

In my recent article, AI Fluency: Build Smarter Code, I explored how modern AI tools can elevate your coding workflow. But there’s an equally important part of developer productivity that often gets ignored:

Debugging isn’t separate from development - it is development.

And yet, we rarely talk about strategies or tools that make debugging easier.

So in this article, I’m focusing entirely on the debugging workflow: the mistakes that slow us down, the simple habits that speed things up, and a new tool I’ve been using that surprised me with how much visibility it gives into runtime errors.

🌐 The Front-End Debugging Struggle

If you're building with JavaScript, React, or Next.js, your debugging workflow probably looks something like this:

• You see an error in Chrome DevTools
• You hop into VS Code to search for the source
• You go back to DevTools to inspect the network response
• Then back to VS Code
• Then back to DevTools (again)

And somewhere in between all of this, you add a handful of console.log() statements.

It works… eventually. But it’s far from efficient.

🧩 Common Debugging Mistakes (We All Make Them)

Here are a few patterns I see repeatedly - in my own work and in the teams I collaborate with:

1. Reloading instead of inspecting
We refresh the page without actually examining stack traces or component boundaries.

2. Misreading error messages
Many runtime errors do point you in the right direction - you just need to know what to look for.

3. Ignoring the Network tab
A surprising number of UI bugs are caused by failed or malformed API responses.

4. Debugging deployed builds without visibility
Production builds are optimized and minified, which makes tracing root causes even harder.

Fortunately, small workflow improvements can solve most of these.

⚡ A Simple Framework for Debugging Faster

Over time, I’ve found it helpful to follow a consistent repeatable process:

1. Reproduce the bug
If you can’t reproduce it, you can’t fix it.

2. Isolate
Is it the component? The API? The data shape? The side effect?

3. Inspect
Use DevTools, breakpoints, and network traces before making code changes.

4. Patch
Make the smallest possible change.

5. Validate
Ensure the fix works in multiple states.

These steps alone can drastically reduce debugging time.

But recently, I started experimenting with a new tool that brings all of this information into one place.

🔍 A New Tool That Helped Me: theORQL

I’ve been trying a tool called theORQL, which runs directly inside Chrome and automatically captures:

• Runtime errors
• Console logs
• Network failures

It then explains the probable root cause and proposes code fixes. What surprised me most is that any accepted fix syncs directly to VS Code - no copy/pasting between tools.

I didn’t expect it to become part of my workflow, but having all debugging surfaces unified in one view made the process feel less fragmented.

To be clear: debugging still requires thinking, patience, and context. No tool replaces that. But tools can shine a light on where bugs occur and reduce the time spent hunting for them.

And in front-end development, that alone can save hours.

🚀 Example: Catching a Runtime Error More Easily

Here’s a typical scenario:

• A component fails due to an undefined property
• The console shows the error, but not the deeper context
• You hop to your editor to find the function that triggered it
• You go back to the browser to reproduce it

With theORQL, the flow looked like this instead:

1. The runtime error popped up in a dedicated debugging panel.
2. The explanation highlighted the line of code and the likely cause.
3. A proposed patch showed how to guard against the undefined state.
4. I accepted the patch and synced it to VS Code.

That alone removed three full cycles of context switching.

🎯 Final Thoughts

Debugging doesn’t have to be frustrating or time-consuming. Small workflow improvements add up, and exploring new tools can reveal simpler paths through complex problems.

If you’ve read my article on AI Fluency: Build Smarter Code, consider this article the natural extension: after all, writing code is only half the story. Understanding, inspecting, and fixing it is the other half.

And the better your debugging toolkit - whether it’s breakpoints, network inspection, or tools like theORQL - the smoother your development journey becomes.

Happy debugging! 🛠️