GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech Observability 2.0: Transforming Logging & Metrics • Charity Majors & James Lewis
9 snips
Dec 20, 2024 
In this discussion, Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb and co-author of "Observability Engineering," teams up with James Lewis, a seasoned software architect at Thoughtworks. They dive into the evolution of observability, highlighting its shift to a critical aspect of software engineering. The pair emphasizes the significance of curiosity in debugging microservices and the role of canonical logs for enhanced analysis. They advocate for a democratized approach to observability, calling for continuous engagement with metrics to streamline complexity in software development.
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Observability as a System Attribute
- Observability has evolved from a niche technical definition to a broader attribute of complex systems, much like performance or reliability.
- This shift acknowledges the market's influence and the diluted meaning of the term.
Early Observability Tools
- James Lewis recalls using Coda Hale's metrics libraries around 2010-2011, marking an early stage in observability tooling.
- Charity Majors acknowledges the innovation of StatsD, highlighting its role as a generic telemetry interface for engineers.
Complexity Shift in Modern Systems
- Modern systems' complexity lies outside the code, within the interactions of numerous services, APIs, and storage systems.
- This shift makes debugging harder, as pinpointing the faulty code within the system becomes the primary challenge.
