If you have been a long-time user of the Google Cloud Platform, you’re likely familiar with the StackDriver suite of Observability and Operations tools. The most unique part of that suite was Google’s StackDriver Debugger, which was designed to debug live code in cloud and production environments with a click of a button. Unfortunately, StackDriver has been renamed as Google’s Operations suite, and the Debugger has been deprecated.

We all know that debugging and troubleshooting cloud-native environments is no walk in the park. Sometimes we forget that debugging the frontend portion of those applications is no simpler and comes with its own set of challenges. We also all know how hard it is to get logging just right: managing verbosity, volume, and usefulness to just the right level.

There’s nothing worse than creating that perfect cup of coffee, sitting down, putting yourself into the mindset of digging deep into your production environment, and…nothing. Because your application is a complex living beast and seeing how all the pieces fit together is often more than you’ve bargained for. While trying to figure out what’s what, your coffee is growing cold, and you’re becoming increasingly frustrated.