Panos.Astithas

Panos Astithas

Firefox Engineer, Developer Tools Team

Panos Astithas is a software engineer at Mozilla, working on Firefox Developer Tools. He has worked for more than fifteen years as a senior developer, development lead and architect in various organizations. From back-end to front-end development and from desktop applications to mobile apps, he is always on the lookout for new challenges and new areas to explore. A long-time open-source contributor, he keeps trying to have his work serve and inspire as many people as possible. Panos holds a PhD from the National Technical University of Athens focusing on computer network security.

Advanced front-end debugging
Track: Next Generation HTML5 and JavaScript

Location:
Grand Ballroom B/C

Abstract:
Modern Web applications are large and complex systems that often require multi-person teams working for many months to build. Developing such complex software requires equally advanced tools to highlight potential problems and boost developer productivity. From consoles and debuggers, to profilers and tracers, the modern developer tools offer a powerful alternative to the traditional debugging method of alert().

In this talk we will examine how these tools work and how we can put them to good use in identifying some common classes of bugs in our programs. We will cover tools about debugging JavaScript code, as well as tools about inspecting the runtime characteristics of our programs. And we will also see how profiling tools can help us make our code faster and smaller at the same time. From closures to promises and from layout flushes to source maps, we will see how many common pitfalls can be avoided in desktop or mobile web applications using such advanced tools.

Advanced JavaScript Debugging Techniques
Location:
Bayview B

Duration:
Half Day

Abstract:
In this half-day workshop we will explore some tools and techniques for debugging JavaScript applications. The focus will be on front-end JavaScript, but many of the lessons learned will apply to back-end JavaScript as well. Using the Firefox Developer Tools as a starting point you will see how to inspect your code for correctness, measure its performance characteristics and understand its runtime behavior. You will get insights into how profilers work, when to use them and when not to. You will learn how to debug other languages that compile to JavaScript, like CoffeeScript, using source maps and how to avoid digging into framework implementations just to figure out how your own code behaves. We will also see how mobile web apps can be debugged locally or remotely and how you can take matters into your own hands by extending the Firefox Developer Tools to tailor them to your needs.