Manual Monitoring vs Observability

Developers should learn manual monitoring for scenarios where automated systems are unavailable, during initial development phases to understand system behavior, or in legacy environments with limited tooling meets developers should learn observability to effectively manage modern cloud-native and microservices architectures, where systems are dynamic and failures can be unpredictable. Here's our take.

Manual Monitoring

Nice Pick

Developers should learn manual monitoring for scenarios where automated systems are unavailable, during initial development phases to understand system behavior, or in legacy environments with limited tooling

Pros

• It's crucial for troubleshooting immediate issues, gaining hands-on insights into system performance, and as a fallback when automated monitoring fails, ensuring operational resilience and quick problem resolution
• Related to: log-analysis, system-administration

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

Observability

Developers should learn observability to effectively manage modern cloud-native and microservices architectures, where systems are dynamic and failures can be unpredictable

Pros

• It is crucial for troubleshooting production issues, ensuring reliability, and improving user experience in applications with high complexity and scale
• Related to: monitoring, distributed-tracing

Cons

• Specific tradeoffs depend on your use case

The Verdict

These tools serve different purposes. Manual Monitoring is a methodology while Observability is a concept. We picked Manual Monitoring based on overall popularity, but your choice depends on what you're building.

The Bottom Line

Manual Monitoring wins

Based on overall popularity. Manual Monitoring is more widely used, but Observability excels in its own space.