Ah, console.log. The steadfast, trusty, and ultimately ancient relic of JavaScript debugging. Every developer's first love, the bread to our coding butter, the... well, you get the idea. But let’s face it, folks, in the vast universe of console methods, console.log is the equivalent of a Nokia 3310. Durable, familiar, and yet profoundly outdated. Let's dive into why we’re still clinging to console.log like it's the last lifeboat on the Titanic, while the fancier lifeboats (like console.table, console.dir, console.group, console.time, console.timeEnd, and console.clear) are out there waving their flashy features at us.
1. console.table: The Organized Sibling
Ever tried to log an array of objects using console.log? Of course, you have. And what did you get? A mess of nested objects that looks like your cat walked across the keyboard.
const data = [
{ name: "Alice", age: 25 },
{ name: "Bob", age: 30 },
{ name: "Charlie", age: 35 }
];
console.log(data);
[
{ name: 'Alice', age: 25 },
{ name: 'Bob', age: 30 },
{ name: 'Charlie', age: 35 }
]
Enter console.table, the method that organizes your data into a neat, readable table. But who needs that, right?
console.table(data);
┌─────────┬─────────┬─────┐
│ (index) │ name │ age │
├─────────┼─────────┼─────┤
│ 0 │ 'Alice' │ 25 │
│ 1 │ 'Bob' │ 30 │
│ 2 │ 'Charlie' │ 35 │
└─────────┴─────────┴─────┘