I've just lost a frustrating amount of time trying to work out why npm run serve was hanging when attempting to run my vue js app. Eventually, I tracked it down to one error in a vue file I made, it took me a long time to work this out since the issue manifests itself in a way that the console window just hangs.
Is there some other way developers can get a more descriptive error list from vue js prior to attempting to run/build?
Personally, I find the most useful and essential tools to be (I use VS Code as "IDE")
Vetur: includes syntax-highlighting, snippets, linter (error checking), auto completition, etc.
Vue.js devtools (for chrome): Not sure about other browsers, but this is incredibly useful for chrome. Let's you see what's really going on with vue.js' components, the store, etc (screenshot from the chrome store page).
Hope this helps!