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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. L
by vanschelven 1y ago
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/ https://www.bugsink.com/blog/track-errors-first/
- nikolay_sivko 1y agoI'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 1y agoI 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 1y agoIt was always "a search away" but on the _web_ one might as well use... A hyperlink