Once you can read a pot's value with analogRead, the natural next move is to look at it. The serial monitor turns out to be the cheapest oscilloscope you'll ever own: a window onto whatever your sketch wants to share.
One read, one line
The pattern is two lines: int v = analogRead(A0); Serial.println(v);. Put a small delay(50) after it so the monitor isn't flooded, and you have a continuous stream of values you can watch as you turn the knob.
That stream is your debug channel. Add another sensor, print both, and you have a multi-line readout. Add a label like Serial.print("pot="); Serial.println(v); and the output suddenly self-describes. This habit — print what you're thinking about — is how embedded engineers debug without breakpoints.
Plot, don't just print
The Arduino IDE's serial plotter (and SimDuino's monitor) will draw any numeric line you print as a chart. A pot wobbles around its set value by ±2–3 counts even when you don't touch it — the plot lets you see that noise directly. A real sensor will have temperature drift, a quantization step, maybe a non-linear response. The plot shows it all.