<story><title>OpenTelemetry in 2023</title><url>https://bit.kevinslin.com/p/opentelemetry-in-2023</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulddraper</author><text>Two problems with OpenTelemetry:&lt;p&gt;1. It doesn&amp;#x27;t know what the hell it is. Is it a semantic standard? Is a protocol? It is a facade? It is a library? What layer of abstraction does it provide? Answer: All of the above! All the things! All the layers!&lt;p&gt;2. No one from OpenTelemetry has actually tried instrumenting a library. And if they have, they haven&amp;#x27;t the first suggestion on how instrumenters should actually use metrics, traces, and logs. Do you write to all three? To one? I asked this question two years ago, zero answers :( [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;opentelemetry-specification&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2107&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;opentelemetry-specificatio...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>withinrafael</author><text>1. Agreed. It&amp;#x27;s the sink and the house attached to it, and the docs are thin and confusing as a result.&lt;p&gt;2. I had a similar experience to you. I wanted to implement a simple heartbeat in our desktop app to get an idea of usage numbers. This is surprisingly not possible, which greatly confuses me given the name of the project. The low engagement on my question put me off and I abandoned my OpenTelemetry planning completely [1][2].&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;community&amp;#x2F;discussions&amp;#x2F;1598&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;community&amp;#x2F;discussions&amp;#x2F;1598&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[2] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;semantic-conventions&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;199&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;semantic-conventions&amp;#x2F;issue...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>OpenTelemetry in 2023</title><url>https://bit.kevinslin.com/p/opentelemetry-in-2023</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>paulddraper</author><text>Two problems with OpenTelemetry:&lt;p&gt;1. It doesn&amp;#x27;t know what the hell it is. Is it a semantic standard? Is a protocol? It is a facade? It is a library? What layer of abstraction does it provide? Answer: All of the above! All the things! All the layers!&lt;p&gt;2. No one from OpenTelemetry has actually tried instrumenting a library. And if they have, they haven&amp;#x27;t the first suggestion on how instrumenters should actually use metrics, traces, and logs. Do you write to all three? To one? I asked this question two years ago, zero answers :( [1]&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;opentelemetry-specification&amp;#x2F;issues&amp;#x2F;2107&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;github.com&amp;#x2F;open-telemetry&amp;#x2F;opentelemetry-specificatio...&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jauntywundrkind</author><text>Good deck of questions but I don&amp;#x27;t think they matter. I don&amp;#x27;t think those are answerable questions for observability, be it OpenTelemetry or other proprietary systems.&lt;p&gt;You can go read the leading observability companies web pages and they&amp;#x27;ll have a 4 page writeup on custom instrumentation. That&amp;#x27;s not much, just covers very elementary basics! It&amp;#x27;s not like OTel is behind. The answer just tends heavily towards &amp;quot;it depends.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;Once you have experience - OTel or other - you can work through these things that might confound a neophyte.</text></comment>