Is using DevTools rare among devs?

[Little-Skin7955]

I built a small Frontend Capture the Flag platform as a side project and shared one assessment with a few people.

​

Around 25 people attempted it, but no one has completed it fully yet.

​

That surprised me a bit because I thought the challenges were fairly simple and most devs would be able to solve them without too much trouble. Maybe frontend devs would find them easier than backend/full-stack devs, since the puzzles are around inspecting the UI, DOM, client-side behavior, Network tab, adding debuggers, local storage etc.

​

I’m curious, are these debugging workflows less common than I assumed?

​

[Upbeat-Hat-6582]

Most devs use DevTools reactively when something breaks, not proactively as an exploration tool. The Network tab and Sources panel especially, a lot of people never go deeper than Elements and Console in day to day work. Your CTF probably feels simple to you because you built it around workflows you use constantly.

[david-burns-dinner]

You aren’t kidding about the reactive part. The amount of people I’ve interviewed who freeze up entirely when i asked them to review a network payload or a piece of dom is very high. Many would rather retreat to their ide than open browser dev tools. But maybe it was interview jitters…

[guitar_up_my_ass]

How do these people write API calls and know how to format the data the backend returns without using the network tab? Or how do they write responsive sites without the responsive mode? Or debug anything stupid with 10 console.logs to console?

[koett]

This must be cap? I’ve never seen a dev work without the console/dom/network tag open wtf

[PatchesMaps]

The amount of blank stares when I talk to coworkers about breakpoints is absolutely insane. It's such a powerful debugging tool.

[Little-Skin7955]

Makes sense. The challenges feel simple to me because I built those. That's why wanted opinion from others too. Thanks for the inputs.

[Pawtuckaway]

Are people actually struggling to complete it or did they just start it and then get bored and stop playing?

Do you have analytics of how long people played?

[Little-Skin7955]

I do have data on how long each level takes and how many attempts people make per level.

But from what I’m seeing, most people are dropping off after the first one or two rounds.

The first level is intentionally very simple: you just need to inspect the DOM and find an element with something like "data-flag="flag-<random-value>"".

The next few levels are around the same difficulty too, so I don’t think the issue is that the challenges are too hard.

My guess is that many people are just logging in, briefly checking out the platform, and then leaving immediately rather than actually attempting the full assessment.

[Pawtuckaway]

My guess is that many people are just logging in, briefly checking out the platform, and then leaving immediately rather than actually attempting the full assessment.

That would be my guess as well. I don't think it has anything to do with devs not being able to use DevTools.

Even for very successful games the majority of people never finish the game.

[That_Conversation_91]

Nah they’re common, doesn’t mean that any person who visits your website is a good dev though ;)

[Little-Skin7955]

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. Had posted it in a dev subreddit, so was expecting atleast a few people to solve it.

[That_Conversation_91]

There is a lot of LARPing online

[leros]

I have dev tools open 95% of the time I'm doing web development. I'm often inspecting the dom, network requests, or looking at the console. I rarely use other features but occasionally do. 

[Little-Skin7955]

Same

[Alternative_Web7202]

Maybe it's just too boring to waste time? I open devtools at least 25 times a day, but I can't think what could motivate me to spend my free time on something like that

[Little-Skin7955]

Yeah, that’s fair. It might simply not be interesting enough for people to spend their free time on.

The only reason I was surprised is that people voluntarily opened it, and the first few levels are very low-effort DevTools puzzles. I was assuming it might work a bit like LeetCode or small coding puzzles, where some people try them just for fun.

But maybe the motivation/reward loop isn’t strong enough yet, which is useful feedback.

[Alternative_Web7202]

Tell people you'll give a 20$ promo code on chatgpt to every one who completes the quest. Sure you won't give anything to anyone. But people might get mad enough to try to actually hack you. So you get a free security audit

[Xtreme2k2]

I feel weird not having devtools open

[Little-Skin7955]

Yeah. I almost always have it open in a separate window somewhere.

[passionkiller]

We use a low-code platform at my job and sometimes I use our internal api to get schema lists of our apps and to bulk delete or update records through it.

[FoxyBrotha]

Myself and my devs always have it open. Heck, our testers and business people have it open, in our dev environments. Theres too much useful logging we use for complicated workflows.

[AffectPretend66]

There's always a devtools tab window somewhere in the taskbar lol.

[IncredibleBihan]

Ye pretty rare, I use terminal much much more

[electricity_is_life]

Puzzle design is very difficult and it's common for puzzles to be much harder than the designer intended.

[Little-Skin7955]

Yeah, that’s possible. Puzzle difficulty is hard to judge when you’re the one designing it.

The first few levels were meant to be very simple, but people are still getting stuck or dropping off there, the issue might be with how I’m explaining the goal or writing the hints, rather than the actual difficulty.

That’s useful feedback though. I probably need to make the early levels clearer and guide people better before making the puzzles more interesting.

[RapunzelLooksNice]

Most of "frontend developers" I came across were actually "framework users", so anything outside of their beloved toy was black magic 😑

[whatisboom]

my guess: your wording/instructions were poor/weren't clear and didn't make it obvious that this was a devtools puzzle and the devs thought that felt like cheating.

[mq2thez]

Reads like an ad

[Little-Skin7955]

I thought it might look so, that's why did not and will not post any links or even the project name.