Full Instrumentation vs Basic Logging

Developers should learn and use Full Instrumentation when building or maintaining large-scale, distributed applications, microservices architectures, or cloud-native systems where visibility into performance and failures is critical meets developers should learn and use basic logging to diagnose issues in production environments where debugging tools are unavailable, track application flow for performance optimization, and maintain audit trails for security and compliance. Here's our take.

Full Instrumentation

Nice Pick

Developers should learn and use Full Instrumentation when building or maintaining large-scale, distributed applications, microservices architectures, or cloud-native systems where visibility into performance and failures is critical

Pros

• It is essential for debugging production issues, meeting service-level objectives (SLOs), and improving user experience by proactively identifying bottlenecks or errors
• Related to: observability, application-performance-monitoring

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Basic Logging

Developers should learn and use basic logging to diagnose issues in production environments where debugging tools are unavailable, track application flow for performance optimization, and maintain audit trails for security and compliance

Pros

• It is essential for any non-trivial application, especially in distributed systems, web services, and long-running processes where real-time monitoring is critical
• Related to: structured-logging, log-aggregation

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Full Instrumentation is a methodology while Basic Logging is a concept. We picked Full Instrumentation based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Full Instrumentation wins

Based on overall popularity. Full Instrumentation is more widely used, but Basic Logging excels in its own space.