Structured Logging That Actually Helps Debugging at 3 AM (opens in new tab)

Most logging is written for the person who wrote the code. The author knows the system, knows what the messages mean, and can fill in context from memory. Then at 3 AM, an alert fires, and the person debugging is someone else — or it's the author at month six, who has forgotten everything. Logs that work at 3 AM are different from logs that look good in a unit test. The difference is structure, context, and the discipline to leave breadcrumbs that the future-you will actually be able to follo...