Drupal 8's new theming system is a thing of beauty. As part of the massive changes to the Drupal 8 (front- and back-end) developer experience, the Devel module for Drupal 8 comes with a new variable inspector. Say goodbye to Krumo, and say hello to Kint. Like its predecessor, when you install the Devel project on a Drupal 8 local environment, you automatically get the Kint module as well (like Krumo, there are no additional downloads). Using Kint is similar to using Krumo, where in Drupal 7, any dsm($variable_name) or dpm($variable_name) call automatically used Krumo to display variables on the page in a way that made it easy(ier?) to dive into the many Drupal PHP arrays and objects. In Drupal 8, kint($variable_name) can be used to output any variable - this works in template files as well via {{ kint(variable_name) }}.

It took me a few weeks to get comfortable with Kint, mainly due to one small interface thing; clicking on the "+" icon in a Kint output recursively opens all the arrays and objects. Depending on the variable you're Kint-ing, this could result in a lot of output to sort through (and, depending on your machine, browser, and site configuration, it could take more than a few seconds to fully render).

After a few weeks of instinctively (and incorrectly) clicking on the "+ button every time I used Kint, I've now retrained myself to utilize it in a much more efficient manner.

1. I almost never click on the "+" anymore. Rather, I click output anywhere other than the "+" to open just that portion of the output.
2. I download and install the Search Kint module whenever I download and install the Devel module for a local environment. This provides an almost-too-convenient-to-believe search box with each Kint output that makes finding things almost trivial.

Using Kint efficiently is one of the skills that every Drupal 8 developer should have. Combined with an interactive debugger, there's virtually nothing that can't be easily discovered when a developer can wield both of these tools.

Learn more about Drupal 8 module and theme development debugging by attending a DrupalEasy workshop!