Eric Brandes

We are unlikely to add additional language support to TrackJS. And it's not just because of our name!

Learn from our mistakes: be careful when using VC funded companies as vendors or important parts of your stack.

Unprofitable companies, like Flexport and Splunk, are a risk for their customers because they can radically change or close down entirely. What about TrackJS?

TrackJS now offers Saved Filter Notifications - create custom alerts for specific error scenarios. Filter by message, user, URL, or other criteria, then get notified when those errors spike. Perfect for monitoring critical issues, API problems, or VIP user experiences.

Ad blockers are blocking TrackJS domains, causing you to miss JavaScript errors from 25-50% of users. Our new domain forwarding feature lets you use a custom domain (like errors.yoursite.com) to bypass ad blockers and capture all your error data.

Microsoft made query string parsing worse in .NET Core. The old HttpUtility.ParseQueryString() returns a secret HttpValueCollection that handles multiple values and URL encoding elegantly. The new approach splits functionality across three classes - QueryHelpers, QueryString, and StringValues - m...

TrackJS solved slow Elasticsearch queries for high-cardinality error data by switching from one complex query to two simpler ones. Instead of calculating nested aggregates for thousands of error groups then discarding most results, they first identify the top 20 groups, then enrich only those wit...

TrackJS debugs their own "Cannot read property 'id' of undefined" error affecting 6 users on critical /account pages. The culprit: PJAX navigation causing lazy-loaded Stripe JavaScript to execute on wrong pages when users navigate quickly on slow networks, creating unexpected execution context.

TrackJS built React components within their existing server-rendered PJAX architecture using "dirty tricks" - mounting/unmounting components on page loads and creating a custom singleton FilterStore instead of Redux. They chose larger class components over micro-components and traditional CSS ove...

TrackJS launches comprehensive filtering system with unified global toolbar supporting multiple simultaneous filters, search patterns, NOT exclusions, and saved filter sets. New capabilities include exact match, wildcard search, and quick suggestions to help developers cut through JavaScript erro...

The event-stream NPM malware incident exposes JavaScript's dependency crisis: 418 packages for a simple React app versus 40 for a massive .NET application. The culture of micropackages, automatic upgrades with ^ operators, and anonymous maintainers creates security nightmares compared to vendorin...

TrackJS elevates application version to a first-class feature with dedicated dashboard grouping, filtering, and drill-down capabilities. Perfect for modern deployment practices where multiple code versions run simultaneously - now you can easily track which releases introduce or fix bugs.

TrackJS switched from failing Mandrill to Mailgun after years of increasing email delivery problems. Key lessons: make failures visible through chat alerts, avoid abstractions until you need them, and sometimes big changes become unavoidable when dependencies deteriorate.

Real business value comes from choosing boring, proven technology over exciting new frameworks. The best code is no code - sometimes waiting solves problems automatically. Every line written has maintenance costs, so prioritize shipping features over perfect abstractions and endless refactoring.

UI component libraries sound perfect for large teams but become nightmares of competing requirements, compatibility issues, and feature bloat. Skip the complexity - use documented style guides with colors and fonts instead. Developers love spending 40 hours on "fun" work to avoid 20 minutes of bo...

Frontend development has become needlessly complex with frameworks requiring massive toolchains for apps destined to be rewritten every 2-3 years. Instead of building cathedrals, focus on speed-to-market with simpler solutions that deliver value quickly.

Eric Brandes argues modern JavaScript frameworks abandon backwards compatibility unlike the web's foundational success. While jQuery maintains stable APIs for years, Angular breaks compatibility every 6 months, creating developer fatigue and wasted money on constant upgrades.

TrackJS finally launches error status tracking - the most requested feature ever! Set custom statuses like "Fixed" or "Investigating" on errors, filter by status across the entire UI, though Elasticsearch's immutability means large updates take time to process.

TrackJS revolutionizes error search with intelligent AND logic instead of OR, exact phrase matching with quotes, optional OR/NOT operators, and powerful global filtering that works across all UI pages - making needle-in-haystack debugging finally possible.

TrackJS introduces Error Groupings to eliminate noise from nearly identical error messages. Use pattern replacements like ${employeeId} to consolidate hundreds of similar errors into single groups, making real problems easier to spot and fix.

TrackJS unveils major feature updates: unlimited notification channels, enhanced search with Lucene syntax, improved ignore rules with descriptions, global filtering across the entire UI, trending errors on dashboard, and multiple account owners support.

Unhandled promise rejections silently break applications without triggering traditional error handlers. Learn how modern browsers now provide standardized events to catch these elusive errors and why proper promise error handling is crucial for robust applications.

Sourcemaps are essential for debugging transpiled JavaScript, mapping minified code back to original ES6/JSX sources. Chrome and Firefox support them natively, while tools like TrackJS automatically apply sourcemaps to production error stack traces, showing actual source code instead of unreadabl...

TrackJS Trends helps you identify important errors from the noise by ranking JavaScript errors like music charts. See top errors, biggest movers, and declining issues to prioritize debugging efforts effectively.

TrackJS now lets you filter out "Script error" messages and Googlebot errors to maintain high signal-to-noise ratios. Plus we've added newline formatting support for better console log readability.