Every software professional in a leadership role is concerned about the caliber of software that gets into the hands of customers. Questions like, is the new app slow to load? Is it working as it should? Why has churn increased? Are natural consequences of building software, yet we don’t always get the answers we need.

Logs have always been a crucial part of applications, providing insight into an application’s every operation and auditing all of its activities. Yet to date, logs have been used primarily for researching incident details or applicative failures. Only recently have R&D and operations teams started paying closer attention to logs in an effort to identify incidents as they occur and recognize trends that can prevent future pitfalls.

One of the joys of using the Ruby language is the many different ways that you can solve the same problem, it’s a very expressive language with a rich set of libraries. But how do we know which is the best, most efficient, use of the language? When we are talking about algorithms which are critical to the performance of your application, understanding the most efficient approach to take is essential.

Launched at KubeCon North America last December, Loki is a Prometheus-inspired service that optimizes storage, search, and aggregation while making logs easy to explore natively in Grafana. Loki is designed to work easily both as microservices and as monoliths, and correlates logs and metrics to save users money. Less than a year later, Loki has almost 6,500 stars on GitHub and is now quickly approaching GA.

You probably use many tools to get through the day. Do you ever wonder what tools get other people through their days? In our Tools This Engineer Uses series, we explore the routines, systems, and tools your peers rely on to solve problems and accomplish goals. Liz Krane, Sentry’s new Developer Advocate, is no stranger to meetups. She created and continues to run Learn Teach Code, the second-largest tech meetup in Southern California with over 9,500 members.

Give your Icinga Web 2 a new look – with official ‘Color Blind Theme’ introduced in version 2.7.0! Not just for people with impaired colour vision – with a fresh and well rounded new palette, the new theme is a real looker!

The definition for APM (Application Performance Management) has evolved greatly over the past years. It has moved from specifically referring to the monitoring of an application’s experience, its code and the timing of its different building blocks, to a broader term that is used for anything related to the performance of the app. It also often includes all the related monitoring, log management and more.

The following first appeared in Dataconomy. How are dynamic IT operations affecting company culture? What do businesses need to understand about data driven AI to successfully drive their operations into the future? Risks that previously stayed inside organizational units, such as IT Ops, now leak across domains, influencing decision-making for the entire company.

More than half of workers across all industries say they’ve experienced job burnout this year, and when you zone in on tech, the number jumps to 60%. It’s so common the World Health Organization has recognized it as an occupational phenomenon. Symptoms of burnout start off small, with employees experiencing reduced efficiency and energy, lowered levels of motivation, reduced job satisfaction, decreased productivity, increased absenteeism, poor workplace morale, and increased turnover.

It’s one thing to write code that works. But what about clean, readable, concise code? That’s another thing entirely. To create an app that solves one problem? Not that hard. What about one that not only solves the problem, but it’s also easy and pleasurable to use? Now we’re talking. You could apply the same reasoning for many software properties, which would make for a long article. Instead, let’s focus on only one of those properties: performance.