[aarmenaa]

I've noticed that for some reason developers really like using logs in place of actual metrics. We use Datadog, and multiple times now I have seen devs add additional logging to an application just so they can then create a monitor that counts those log events. I think it's a path of least resistance thing; emitting logs is very easy, and counting them is also very easy. Reporting actual metrics isn't really difficult either, but unless you're already familiar with the system it's more effort to determine how to do it than just emitting a log line, so yeah.

[chaps]

Because when the application is breaking it's good to know why! Logs can be just as ephemeral as metrics -- in many cases, even more so. They're not even mutually exclusive.

Where exactly does this anti-logs sentiment come from? Is it because tools like datadog can be lackluster for reading logs across bunches of hosts?

[stackskipton]

For me, I don't use Datadog so it's not that $ParticularTool does not work with logs, it's all stuff I put in my original post, it's a ton of samples, filtering puts heavy strain on the systems and it's extremely brittle IME.

If you have good metrics, you can generally get much further not even logging aggregating outside tossing everything into STDOUT and checking on it when you have alerts.

[marcosdumay]

It GP is not anti-log.

It's claiming that you should output working logs, metrics, and failure logs into different streams.

[Espressosaurus]

My experience is that metrics may tell you something is wrong, but logs are required to tell you what went wrong and why.

A simple fixed-length rolling buffer can get you pretty far for logging, but it isn't something you necessarily want to get off-device except when something bad has happened.

[liveoneggs]

logs are for people and trying to make them for computers is hard.

[marcosdumay]

Well, if you have low enough volume, you have to implement logs anyway and don't have a reason to optimize their volume.

I imagine many people learn on an environment like this and get thrown in a high volume one without chance to adapt.