Logging is the thankless yet essential task of recording events and messages in a software system, so that when (not if) things inevitably break, some poor soul can dig through the endless log files to figure out what went wrong. It's the software equivalent of a black box on an airplane, except instead of recording the pilot's last words, it's recording the last gasps of a dying server process.

How to use it in a sentence

• "I spent all day logging every time the user clicked a button, so that when they complain that the app is broken, I can smugly point to the logs and tell them it's user error."

• "Our new hire spent a week instrumenting the legacy codebase with logging, which is a rite of passage for any developer joining our team - like hazing, but with more grep."

If you actually want to learn more...

• DIP in the Wild by Martin Fowler dives into the details of logging best practices, like using gateways to reduce duplication and complexity.

• The QA in Production article, also by Martin Fowler, discusses how logging can be used to gather valuable real-time data about your system, not just for debugging.

• This Arrested DevOps podcast episode sponsored by Loggly covers the features and benefits of using a log management platform for proactive monitoring, troubleshooting, security and more.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.