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**Gerhard Lazu:** I mean that's what a project is, right? All the items that you're doing are the issues and the PRs. So I'm wondering, in your opinion, Kathy, what would a better documentation implementation look like in the context of a GitHub repository, alongside all the other things which I just mentioned? |
**Kathy Korevec:** We often talked about whether we should have introduced a docs’ tab in the repository, and it would kind of take -- you know, like you mentioned, the wiki, and this is kind of what a wiki is supposed to be... But I think the word wiki is a little overloaded, and the wiki product didn't take off, I th... |
But I think there's something really powerful about having the documentation right there with the code, in the repository, especially like -- the documentation I was working with was documentation that was external, and also accessible without a login or anything, so external to the product. And so you almost have like... |
But what we're kind of talking about now is repository or code documentation, and having that all in one place is really, really useful. |
Having the readme document where you have installation information, and you have update information, and how to navigate this repository - all of that's really, really powerful, and that's a piece of documentation. And so introducing something similar to where you could potentially have the documentation or a docs tab ... |
So there's something really powerful about that kind of a workflow, where not only are you getting the context of having the docs in a tab for the end user, but you're also thinking about the published flow, and automating that published flow in kind of a cool way. And we've been talking a lot about like -- if you're o... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I'm a big fan of everybody meeting in a single place and then seeing what happens, and a GitHub repository - to me, that's what it is. The discussions are happening there, the automation is happening there via GitHub Actions, the code is definitely happening there, your issues, your pull requests, com... |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** You could just clone the wiki, and then you would have a repository of your wiki. And that was a bit like, "What?!" That was just a bit awkward. but again, it worked. And people that knew it, loved it, and used it, and so on and so forth. |
Once you start having many repositories, unless you need them -- and if you're like thousands and thousands of people, you definitely need them. Well, I don't know... Facebook, single repo; Google, single repo. I mean, maybe, I don't know. I think there are extremes, but let's not get bogged down in this. |
**Kathy Korevec:** You know, it's really interesting... One of the things that we had to solve for when we open source documentation, speaking of "Do I have one repo or do I have multiple ones?" is that we had to actually -- because we were the documentation team, we were documenting products that were under developmen... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. Okay. Are those GitHub Actions public, by any chance? |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes, the one that we used - it's called Repo Sync, and that's an open source project. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** I'll check it out, because that sounds really interesting. That sounds really interesting. |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** We're approaching the end of this... I know that some people, some listeners may be confused. The reason why they're confused is because when I started talking to Kathy, she was at GitHub; but when we recorded - she's at Vercel now. So I think that the only logical next step is to do another interview... |
**Kathy Korevec:** \[laughs\] Yes. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That's, at least, what I think. So -- |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes, we can totally do that. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yes, one focused on Vercel and the amazing work that you do there, and the amazing work that the team does, I think would be well deserved. Let's put a pin in it for now. We didn't even talk about Kathy's philosophy page, kathy.pm/philosophy, that's a great one. You have to check it out right now. Put... |
**Kathy Korevec:** My three favorite... Well, I've just added one that I think -- maybe I'll just add my one favorite. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Okay. Yes. |
**Kathy Korevec:** It's at the very, very top, I just added it. It's about embracing failure, and I think that's really, really important. I think a lot of people in this industry, myself included, have a lot of imposter syndrome. I have a ton right now, because I just started at Vercel, and I'm working with very, very... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** This is exactly what I've been talking to someone, I can't remember their name, two days ago. And I was talking to someone else, I think it was Patrick, two weeks ago, about learning from failure. Brian Lyle, I remembered him. |
I was not talking, replying to a tweet; let me be specific and clear. I was replying to a tweet saying about how much more we learned from failure than from success. And my opinion is that it has to do with the bias for loss. People feel losing a lot harsher than when they win. They have stronger emotions about loss th... |
But if your experiment failed, you've learned something. And if you learn from failure - well, is there a better thing? I don't know what you could learn better or what source of learnings is better than failure. And if you start looking at it like that, the world is your oyster. |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes, totally. I mean, the fastest way to being right is to admit that you were wrong. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Exactly. |
**Kathy Korevec:** For me, it helped. It helped me embrace this fear of failure. I think it's something that you have to embrace and use to help you just get better. |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Yes. I would ask you, if a listener had to remember one thing from this conversation, what would that be? But from my perspective, it would be just what we discussed, learning from failure. Is there something else that as a listener I should take away from this other than that, which I think is the to... |
**Kathy Korevec:** You know, I think that because we were talking about documentation, probably one of the biggest things I would take away from this conversation is that if you are shipping things specifically for developers, documentation is going to unlock that magic moment for them, no matter what. And that's why d... |
**Gerhard Lazu:** That sums it up so nicely, there's nothing more to add. Kathy, this has been a pleasure. Thank you very much. |
**Kathy Korevec:** Yes, thank you for having me. This has been really fun. |
• Alex Koutmos discusses his work on Elixir projects, including Changelog app optimizations |
• PromEx library for Prometheus metrics and Grafana dashboards is introduced |
• Features of PromEx include automatic configuration, plugin support, and annotations for deploys |
• Discussion on the challenges of manual Prometheus and Grafana setup and how PromEx addresses them |
• Alex Koutmos shares his experience with Erlang 24's just-in-time compiler and its potential benefits for Elixir and Phoenix applications |
• Elixir OTP 24 performance improvements (30-50% increase) |
• PromEx and its integration with Prometheus metrics and Grafana Agent |
• Observability pillars: metrics, logs, and traces, and their benefits and trade-offs |
• Potential advantages of using events as a single observability data store |
• Differences between metrics and logs |
• Current limitations of monitoring tools (metrics/logs/traces) |
• Potential for unified observability tool or approach |
• Benefits of explicit tools for specific purposes vs. one unifying tool |
• The role of exemplars in bridging the gap between metrics, traces, and logs |
• Challenges of using logs as a source of metrics and performance data |
• Log support in PromEx is limited to shipping mechanism |
• PromEx uses Grafana Agent for exporting logs to Loki |
• Discussion of events and how they are used in Elixir/Erlang ecosystem |
• OpenTelemetry implementation for tracing in Elixir/Erlang |
• Telemetry library for surfacing internal library events |
• PromEx converts telemetry events into Prometheus metrics |
• Users can create their own plugins and Grafana dashboards for specific needs |
• Integration with Honeycomb for exposing raw events considered but not currently implemented |
• Discussion of available plugins for PromEx, including Phoenix, Oban, Ecto, and Broadway |
• Plans for updating Changelog.com to Erlang 24, with a live upgrade from Erlang 23 |
• Expected benefits of upgrading to Erlang 24, including reduced memory usage, improved serialization speed, and lower latency |
• Discussion of metrics and monitoring for the upgrade, including Grafana Cloud probes |
• Plans for documenting the upgrade process through blog posts and livestreams |
• Plans for the weekend: gardening and DIY projects |
• Balancing work (PromEx/Erlang) with personal interests/hobbies |
• Discussion of DIY skills/experience |
• Weather conditions affecting plans (barbecue) |
• Importance of documenting work with photos/videos |
**Gerhard Lazu:** Hey, welcome to the show. We have Alex today with us, Alex Koutmos. Some of you may know him from Beam Radio, for those that are listening. Elixir - you have Elixir Tips going; tip \#100 landed not long ago, right? |
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