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I'm very much in favor of this but his observability stack is seriously lacking. With Developer Observability tools this is much easier and more powerful: https

I'm very much in favor of this but his observability stack is seriously lacking. With Developer Observability tools this is much easier and more powerful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0DPO5jlZtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0DPO5jlZtU

The_Amp_Walrus 4y ago
Would you add any categories to this list, or did you think the tools recommended within the categories were lacking? - Uptime monitoring - Error reporting - Log aggregation - Performance monitoring
- invalidname 4y ago
  A developer observability tool like Lightrun would make a huge difference.
  - trog 4y ago
    Never heard of Lightrun before, but it looks very neat - although I'm immediately turned off by the pricing page just saying "contact us".
    - invalidname 4y ago
      I totally get you. There's a free version but yes.
sa46 4y ago
How would Lightrun have helped here? Skimming their docs, it looks like a fancy debugger that can log stuff on prod and display it in your IDE. A debugger is most useful when you know where the problem is and you can either reproduce it or it occurs often enough to observe. Neither was true for OP. Additionally, the problem was in nginx and it's not clear if the error was visible from a part of the stack that Lightrun supports. That said, I'm always game to hear about alternative debugging techniques.
- invalidname 4y ago
  This is classic for a tool like that... You know an email isn't sent to some users. You start placing conditional snapshots (like conditional breakpoints but they don't stop) in key locations. You can use conditions like "currentUser == 'user experiencing problem'". Or you can place the snapshots in places where code "should" reach in case of error. Go make coffee. Come back and you'll see stack traces and variable values you can analyze to see the problem. The nice thing is that it will even work if you have a cluster. Just place the snapshot in a tag which applies to all the servers. You don't need to update the code, there's no risk involved etc.

The_Amp_Walrus 4y ago

Would you add any categories to this list, or did you think the tools recommended within the categories were lacking? - Uptime monitoring - Error reporting - Log aggregation - Performance monitoring

invalidname 4y ago
A developer observability tool like Lightrun would make a huge difference.
- trog 4y ago
  Never heard of Lightrun before, but it looks very neat - although I'm immediately turned off by the pricing page just saying "contact us".
  - invalidname 4y ago
    I totally get you. There's a free version but yes.

sa46 4y ago

How would Lightrun have helped here? Skimming their docs, it looks like a fancy debugger that can log stuff on prod and display it in your IDE. A debugger is most useful when you know where the problem is and you can either reproduce it or it occurs often enough to observe. Neither was true for OP. Additionally, the problem was in nginx and it's not clear if the error was visible from a part of the stack that Lightrun supports. That said, I'm always game to hear about alternative debugging techniques.

invalidname 4y ago
This is classic for a tool like that... You know an email isn't sent to some users. You start placing conditional snapshots (like conditional breakpoints but they don't stop) in key locations. You can use conditions like "currentUser == 'user experiencing problem'". Or you can place the snapshots in places where code "should" reach in case of error. Go make coffee. Come back and you'll see stack traces and variable values you can analyze to see the problem. The nice thing is that it will even work if you have a cluster. Just place the snapshot in a tag which applies to all the servers. You don't need to update the code, there's no risk involved etc.