IIRC, a core point in early days of Prometheus was a greatly simplified system that built on some of the same ideas, but without the parts that made it into pun

IIRC, a core point in early days of Prometheus was a greatly simplified system that built on some of the same ideas, but without the parts that made it into punch line of memes or a hazing ritual for new guys. While the text based metrics aren't best, they are a reasonable compromise, and I found that it provides a good enough common interface where if needed I can change what collects from it later on. Are there better options? SURE! I can, however, usually get my 80% of the problem solved with Prometheus integration and worry about scaling later.