APM tools like Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace make a simple promise: just instrument every system, send us all logs, traces and metrics, and you&rs

You don’t need Application Performance Monitoring

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2024-11-05 10:30:04

APM tools like Datadog, New Relic, and Dynatrace make a simple promise: just instrument every system, send us all logs, traces and metrics, and you’ll get a full picture of what’s going on, which will help you optimize performance.

No need to do too much thinking about performance, just send us the data and we’ll tell you what’s wrong. This “kitchen sink” approach aligns well with an industry eager to get easy solutions to hard performance problems.

In this article, I’ll argue that APM tools are a trap. They encourage a reactive approach to performance, mask deeper design issues, and come with real costs that often outweigh the benefits. Instead of empowering developers to build performant code from the start, APM fosters a mindset of “measure first”, fixing bottlenecks only as they appear. This approach can lead to a cycle of alerts, reactive fixes, and scattered inefficiencies that could have been avoided with proactive design choices.

APM tools revolve around alerts and metrics, which means teams focus on fixing issues only as they become visible in the tool. This trains developers to react to immediate problems rather than build with performance in mind from the start. That is, setting up APM nudges your team into a reactive mindset, where insight only comes once issues have already impacted the system.

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