[vanschelven]

The article never really explains what eBPF is -- AFAIU, it’s a kernel feature that lets you trace syscalls and network events without touching your app code. Low overhead, good for metrics, but not exactly transparent.

It’s the umpteenth OTEL-critical article on the front page of HN this month alone... I have to say I share the sentiment but probably for different reasons. My take is quite the opposite: most value is precisely in the application (code) level so you definetly should instrument... and then focus on Errors over "general observability"[0]

[0] https://www.bugsink.com/blog/track-errors-first/

[nikolay_sivko]

I'm the author. I wouldn’t say the post is critical of OTEL. I just wanted to measure the overhead, that’s all. Benchmarks shouldn’t be seen as critique. Quite the opposite, we can only improve things if we’ve measured them first.

[politician]

I don't want to take away from your point, and yet... if anyone lacks background knowledge these days the relevant context is just an LLM prompt away.

[vanschelven]

It was always "a search away" but on the _web_ one might as well use... A hyperlink