have they though? i for one remember the "golden days" being much more about checking specific values for things you already know could happen than gathering telemetry to be able to ask questions you never would have even thought about asking at the time you set it up.

Out of curiosity, what relevance do you mean it would have for the specific topic I was writing about?

Author of the post here. I definitely agree with that assessment. Having multiple stacks monitor each other is a really good, albeit somewhat resource intensive, way to cover all of the *likely* cases. The cost of covering that last percent very quickly approaches the point of diminishing returns.

You start towards it in your post, but don't explicitly call it out: the central task is decreasing complexity.

A "dumb" heartbeat message, and a check for its absence, is reliable precisely because of its simplicity.

So if the question is "How do I monitor my complicated observability stack?" then the answer, to me, starts with "What is the simplest method of accomplishing the minimal version of my goals?"

Still my favorite console. 40 years later, it remains plugged in and used regularly.

logs, traces and profiling were all viable parts of a good monitoring stack even prior to the term observability being coined.

which i think is the point of the article as well. :)

The article mentions that the term “observability” was coined in 1960.

It very much is :-)

Hey guys!

I've put together a curated list on software architecture. Would be awesome if you'd like to contribute with your best resources on the topic.

Thanks