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Ask HN: Do You Use Logging?
It seems that with advent of technologies for capturing errors with breadcrumbs there is a diminished need for ever reading error logs.
I am talking about sifting through large log files looking for clues as to what happened.
If you do, I would be curious to know what's your use case?
- yuppie_scum 5y agoIs this a phish for log4j users?
- vulcan01 5y agoI don't think we need to be this cynical - this could simply be someone who saw the log4j news and was wondering why people use logging nowadays. Which is, incidentally, a question that I also have.
- gajus 5y agoCoincidence, or maybe subconscious. Didn't even notice the log4j before posting this.
- chadaustin 5y agoEvery day. I spent most of my time since April sifting through production logs to track down a bug between FSEvents and Watchman that produced incorrect query results. Despite much effort, I was never able to reproduce locally. Logs, ring buffers, and remote event recording are invaluable.
- ungawatkt 5y agoLogging isn't only error catching (though I do use it for that). Logging also gets you metrics, access info, timing info, etc. You can get a lot of insights out of the http access logs of a server, even without having errors.
- mbfg 5y agoi think a better question (seriously) is who doesn't use logs.
- thesuperbigfrog 5y ago>> "capturing errors with breadcrumbs" Forgive my ignorance, but what is this? How would I set up my server that handles API requests to use it?
- jiehong 5y agoGood structured logs help you understand what happens, even if you don’t necessarily get an error per say. My use case is distributed backend traffic written in many different languages, none of them supported by Sentry breadcrumbs (I think that’s what you meant). In another context, I’ve seen logs for some internet providers log where they branch off according to their spec: you could read the logs as an actual tree of decisions taken by the program and compare it with the spec. Sometimes, if someone asks me what a program does, I’d say "it logs, mainly, and produces a http response too".