[10000truths]

Isn’t this basically what structured binary logs are? Instead of writing a string like `Error: foo timeout after ${elapsed_amt} ms` to the log, you write a 4-byte error code and a 4 byte integer for elapsed_amt. I know there are libraries like C++’s nanolog that do this for you, under the hood.

[nerdponx]

Maybe this is a silly question, but is there much value in a 4-byte binary code compared to a human-readable log with human-readable codes? Maybe size, but logfmt especially is not much less compact than binary data.

[jldugger]

Well, the value is mostly in query writing, but at that point you're basically writing a very bad TSDB?

[jldugger]

That solves the fingerprint, but you still need to count and score.