The Python You Didn’t Write: Understanding Logs, Metrics, and Monitoring for Better Production Code

Abstract

Many Python developers write code that works beautifully until it lands in production and something breaks. Suddenly, the bug isn’t in the logic, it’s in what you didn’t see coming. Without proper logging, metrics, or monitoring, it’s hard to answer even basic questions like: “Is this function working as expected?”, “Why did this job fail?”, or “How many users are affected?” This talk is for anyone who’s deployed (or wants to deploy) Python apps and has ever struggled to debug or monitor them after launch. I’ll introduce the concept of observability but without the buzzwords or complexity. Through real-life scenarios, I’ll explain how even a few lines of thoughtful logging and some basic metrics can transform one’s code from “it works on my machine” to “I can debug this at 2 AM.” We’ll walk through examples of poor vs. effective logging, how metrics reveal patterns logs can’t, and how monitoring ties it all together. Whether one is building web apps, CLIs, or automation scripts, this talk will show how one can start writing more observable Python.

Speakers