Debugging Schrödinger's App

Is your deployed application both working and broken right now? Learn how distributed tracing lets you finally open the box and see its true state.

#1about 5 minutes

An early journey into programming and scalability

Building for scale from the very first git init is crucial, as illustrated by the "Friday night rule" for choosing sustainable technology.

#2about 4 minutes

Exploring the versatility of Python across different domains

Python serves as a versatile, heavy-lifting language for diverse applications including APIs, data science, web development with Flask, and IoT projects using MicroPython.

#3about 4 minutes

Applying the Schrödinger's cat analogy to application bugs

The Schrödinger's cat thought experiment illustrates how an unobserved application can be considered both working and broken simultaneously, highlighting the need for observability.

#4about 9 minutes

A practical demo of debugging a local Flask application

A live demonstration shows how to debug a local Flask to-do app by intentionally triggering errors and observing the output directly in the console.

#5about 3 minutes

Why traditional debugging fails in distributed cloud environments

Local debugging techniques become ineffective in cloud-native architectures where errors can cascade across multiple containers, regions, and microservices.

#6about 8 minutes

Solving cloud debugging with OpenTelemetry distributed tracing

OpenTelemetry provides a vendor-neutral, open-source standard for distributed tracing, enabling agentless observability across complex cloud applications.

#7about 9 minutes

Tracing a request across ECS, SQS, and Lambda

A deployed application demonstrates how OpenTelemetry traces a single user request as it flows from a containerized Flask app on ECS through an SQS queue to a Lambda function.

#8about 11 minutes

Final takeaways on building observable applications

The key to successful application deployment is to build for scale from the start, continuously refine code, and implement comprehensive monitoring and tracing for all services.

From learning to earning

Jobs that call for the skills explored in this talk.