The Laravel Podcast How We Built Nightwatch, with Jess Archer
Apr 14, 2025
Jess Archer, Engineering Team Lead at Laravel from Brisbane, dives into the creation of Nightwatch, a tool for exception tracking and performance monitoring. She shares insights on integrating large data sets with technologies like Kafka and ClickHouse, emphasizing the need for scalable architecture. Archer highlights the importance of realistic seed data for testing and the collaborative workflows that drive project success. She discusses the balance between performance and observability in monitoring tools, ensuring robust applications without compromising user experience.
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Joint Application
- Jess Archer and Tim McDonald applied to Laravel together.
- They wrote a joint application script, mimicking a conversation referencing each other's skills.
First Project
- Jess Archer's first project at Laravel was building the Vite plugin for Laravel.
- This involved replacing Webpack with Vite while maintaining a good developer experience.
Nightwatch Overview
- Nightwatch offers exception tracking, performance monitoring, and logging.
- These combined features link errors, performance issues, and logs for comprehensive debugging.