Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
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Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
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Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#2While I see the point the author is trying to make, I'm not really sure I agree. Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. At best, logs are something they need for compliance, for most, the concept doesn't exist at all. I do agree that the logs should help you understand what went wrong and why, but in that regard the principle is the same for both sysadmins and developers and I don't really see the difference?
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#3While I see the point the author is trying to make, I'm not really sure I agree. Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. At best, logs are something they need for compliance, for most, the concept doesn't exist at all. I do agree that the logs should help you understand what went wrong and why, but in that regard the principle is the same for both sysadmins and developers and I don't really see th…
> Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs.
Yes, see all the questions on StackOverflow with people posting their error message without reading it, like “I got an error that says ‘fail! please install package xyz!’, what should I do?!?”.
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#4While I see the point the author is trying to make, I'm not really sure I agree. Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. At best, logs are something they need for compliance, for most, the concept doesn't exist at all. I do agree that the logs should help you understand what went wrong and why, but in that regard the principle is the same for both sysadmins and developers and I don't really see th…
> Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. Yes, see all the questions on StackOverflow with people posting their error message without reading it, like “I got an error that says ‘fail! please install package xyz!’, what should I do?!?”.
That question is more likely how do I install, not what to install.
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#5For a FOSS Android app I co-develop, we go out of our way to make verbose logging efficient to collect & easy to share (one-click copy). I've seen users get good mileage out of asking an LLM just what has gone wrong. We are adding more structure to log messages and add in as much state (like callstack) as possible with each log line, and diagnostics from procfs on resources held (like memory, threads, fds).
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#6While I see the point the author is trying to make, I'm not really sure I agree. Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. At best, logs are something they need for compliance, for most, the concept doesn't exist at all. I do agree that the logs should help you understand what went wrong and why, but in that regard the principle is the same for both sysadmins and developers and I don't really see th…
Oddly enough though, my journey into computers was greatly assisted by my curiosity at random log files that were being dumped to my desktop constantly.
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#7All software should provide something meaningful for anybody to diagnose, if they’re inclined to. It’s particularly bad in the (Apple) mobile ecosystem, including AppleTV.
I have AdGuard Home but one of my spouse’s streaming services wouldn’t work. “There was a problem.” Gee thanks. Eventually figured out that I had to unblock a few hosts so it would work. Only found which ones by googling and finding some other poor soul who fixed it and documented it.
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. Yes, see all the questions on StackOverflow with people posting their error message without reading it, like “I got an error that says ‘fail! please install package xyz!’, what should I do?!?”.
That question is more likely how do I install, not what to install.
I think that's being very generous. If you've ever been in tech support, you'll be amazed at how often you'll be asked what to do when it tells me to do X.
If they don't know how to do X, then they should be able to look up how to do X. If it's something like install 3rd party library, then that's not the first party's responsibility. Especially OSS for different arch/distros. They are all different. Look up the 3rd party's repo and figure it out.
But no, it's contact support straight away.
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#9[flagged]
Re: Log messages are mostly for the people operating your software
#10While I see the point the author is trying to make, I'm not really sure I agree. Most users don't even read error messages, never mind logs. At best, logs are something they need for compliance, for most, the concept doesn't exist at all. I do agree that the logs should help you understand what went wrong and why, but in that regard the principle is the same for both sysadmins and developers and I don't really see th…
Sysadmins needs logs that tell them what action they can do fix it. Developers need logs that tell them what a system is doing.
Generally a sysadmin needs to know "is there an action I can do to correct this" where as a dev has the power to alter source code and thus needs to know what and where the system is doing things.