How to Make your Console Output Fun and Interactive in JavaScript and Node.js

In this tutorial, you'll learn how to add a randomized delay to the console.log statements in JavaScript and Node.js.

Why would you want to do this?

First of all, programming should be fun. And making a boring thing like console.log look nice is very pleasing.

If you want to get quick access to the source code, you can check out this GitHub repository.

Step 1: Create a function that takes the string and passes it into console.log

To make sure that every step is clear, we'll start small and create a function that accepts a string as a parameter and logs it to the console.

const log = (s) => {
  console.log(s);
}

Step 2: Log characters of the string one-by-one

Before we can add a delay between the output of the individual chars, we need to make sure that they're actually split.

Let's add a for loop that iterates over each letter of the string and prints it to the console.

const log = (s) => {
  for (const c of s) {
    console.log(c);
  }
}

Step 3: How to fix the newline issue

Now, each letter is printed on a new line as every call to console.log adds an empty line.

We'll replace the console.log with process.stdout.write which essentially does the same thing, but doesn't add a new line after the output.

Now, however, we've lost the newline in the very end of the output, which is still desirable. We'll add it by explicitly printing the \n character.

const log = (s) => {
  for (const c of s) {
    process.stdout.write(c);
  }
  process.stdout.write('\n');
}

Step 4: Implement the `sleep` function

In JavaScript we can't simply stop the execution of the synchronous code for some amount of time. To make this happen, we need to write our own function. Let's call it sleep.

It should accept a single parameter ms and return a Promise that resolves after the delay of ms milliseconds.

const sleep = (ms) => {
  return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
};

Step 5: Add the delay

So, we're ready to add a delay to our output! We need a couple of things here:

add a parameter delay to the function log
make the function log asynchronous by adding the keyword async
call a sleep function that will delay the next loop iteration by delay milliseconds

const sleep = (ms) => {
  return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
};

const log = async (s, delay) => {
  for (const c of s) {
    process.stdout.write(c);
    await sleep(delay);
  }
  process.stdout.write('\n');
}

Step 6: Implement randomized delay

The output will look even better if we randomize the timing.

Let's add another boolean parameter randomized to the function log. If it's true, then the argument passed into sleep should be in the range from 0 to delay milliseconds.

const sleep = (ms) => {
  return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
};

const log = async (s, delay, randomized) => {
  for (const c of s) {
    process.stdout.write(c);
    await sleep((randomized ? Math.random() : 1) * delay);
  }
  process.stdout.write('\n');
}

I've used a ternary operator, but you can replace it with a regular if statement:

if (randomized) {
  sleep(Math.random * delay);
} else {
  sleep(delay);
}

Step 7: Make the log configurable

Right now, we've implemented pretty much everything we wanted to. But calling it isn't very clean as we have to pass the delay and randomization flag every time we want to print something to the console.

log('Hello, world!', 100, true);
log('What\'s up?', 100, true);
log('How are you?', 100, true);

It'd be nice if we could have a configurable log that could be called with a single parameter - a string that we want to output.

To do this, we'll have to rewrite our code. Here's the plan:

wrap all current functionality into a single function funkylog that accepts an object with 2 fields, delay and randomized
funkylog should return the anonymous arrow function. Its implementation should be the same as log, that we've implemented on steps 1 through 6
parameters delay and randomized should be removed from the log function as now they'll be passed down from the funkylog

const funkylog = ({ delay, randomized }) => {
  const sleep = (ms) => {
    return new Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms));
  };
    
  return async (s) => {
    for (const c of s) {
      process.stdout.write(c);
      await sleep((randomized ? Math.random() : 1) * delay);
    }
    process.stdout.write('\n');
  }
};

Step 8: Add the finishing touch

Let's take a look at what we've got:

const log = funkylog({ delay: 100, randomized: true });

log('Hello, world!');
log('What\'s up?');
log('How are you?');

We can create a configurable logger using the function funkylog
We can select any delay we want
Using the logger doesn't require us to pass the delay every time we call it

One more improvement that we can make is providing a default value for the delay parameter.

const funkylog = ({ delay = 100, randomized }) => {
    ..
    ..

So, now we can create the funkylog without any arguments and it will still work!

const log = funkylog();

console.log('Hello, world!');

Improvement ideas

As I've said from the very beginning, first of all, programming should be fun. Otherwise it'll become a routine and you won't enjoy doing it.

Do make further improvements to the funkylog and let me know what your results look like! For example, you can spice up the output by colorizing it. You can use the npm module chalk for it.

Then, once you have implemented different colors, you can add another flag that would add an additional delay between the words in the string.

Thank you for staying with me, throughout the whole tutorial!
I write a programming blog at learn.coderslang.com and build a Full Stack JS course.