How a Java library is taking a completely new approach to understanding what the code does, and why it makes perfect developer sense — A while back, I wrote about the fact that logs need an overhaul, and that practices that were relevant when logs were still text messages in files may no longer be relevant in an age when logs traces and metrics are as artifacts and observations stored in cloud platforms.

Continuous deployment vs. continuous delivery. Here’s some ways to not lose track of the ultimate goal: continuous improvement — Accelerating releases all the way to continuous deployment, that is, releasing more often, was never simply about speed or velocity. Those were simply great selling points to justify investing in such modern practices to a less tech-savvy or more business-minded stakeholder.

Python decorators can help keep OpenTelemetry tracing instrumentation DRY — Last week, I wrote a post on the topic of using the Decorator design pattern to help remove some of the boilerplate required to set up tracing. My example code was using .NET, which required some heavy lifting, using a DispatchProxy class to intercept method calls and inject the tracing…

How decorators can help keep OpenTelemetry tracing instrumentation DRY — .NET has definitely embraced OpenTelemetry in its recent releases. Its support for defining traces and spans using the built-in System.Diagnostics classes greatly simplifies the task of instrumenting code. My only nitpicky complaint about the .NET …

The dev stack is evolving. I asked Scott Hanselman, Juraci Paixã, and Ilai Fallach what's new in their developer toolbox. Here’s what I found out — What Is the Modern Developer Stack? I’ve been a developer in some form or another for over two decades now. At the risk of sounding like an old geezer, it was a very different experience developing back then… 👴 And I haven’t the slightest tinge of nostalgia.

What every developer needs to know about observability and how to leverage OSS tools to make your code better — This is the second in a three-part series that will review some of the observability technologies available to developers today, why they make coding better, and what specific insights they can provide. Here is the link to part one in case you missed it. TLDR: In this post, we’ll run…

Like tests, observability tools provide a way for developers to validate code assumptions, without the added cement. — This is the first in a three-part series that will review some of the observability technologies available to developers today and what specific insights they can provide. Read part 2 here. Observability? Isn't that a DevOps thing? Historically, observability was never high on developer teams’ worry lists. Coding features is what developers do, and observability doesn’t…

How the ‘definition of done’ falls short of describing the required effort to bring a feature to maturity — It's easy to see why we need a “definition of done”, it is one of those things that seem so obvious once you adopt them. Without the ׳done׳ definition, communication regarding development progress becomes ambiguous. …

Logs and traces are the medium, definitely not the message — In a previous post, I explained why I think we should care about Continuous Feedback and why it’s the one element of the DevOps eco-system that somehow never got developed. Today, I want to discuss the the feedback we currently use in our code and how to make it better. …