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0 pointsstrogonoff10mo ago0 comments

> The truth is that in most real-world scenarios getting alerts, metrics is much more important than building a fully resilient system (Expensive, maybe overengieering for early stage etc.).

Funny, because I have the opposite opinion. Build for failure first; if it’s critical/production then also monitor, but if an earthquake takes down an EC2 zone and you have no ability to spin it up exactly the way it was then the avalanche of alerts and metrics falling off a cliff[0] isn’t exactly going to help you (or your mental well-being).

Generally speaking, if you build for failure first, then monitoring becomes much more useful and actionable; and simultaneously it becomes much less important for a hobby project.

[0] That assuming you gather them from a different zone that wasn’t affected by the same downtime in the first place; speaking of, how are you monitoring your monitors? and so on.

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dewey10mo ago

This thread isn't going anywhere. If your startup hasn't found paying customers there's no need to build earthquake-resilient software. For most businesses that are not billion dollar companies there isn't.

Of course for engineers that's a nice challenge, but that's the reason why engineers without a business sense have a hard time building their own companies if you prioritize perfect code and overengineered infrastructure over talking to customers or building the business.

strogonoffOP10mo ago

I don’t think running a container, which takes one command and one small YAML file, is either overengineering or difficult.

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