Practical Debugging at Scale: fail-safe and fail-fast - P. 29

The choice between fail-safe and fail-fast is all around us. It is crucial that we make the right consistent choice across our development stack. To do so we need to understand the forces at play and why they matter.

This video is a part of the third module covering debugging tools. Is your debugging session limited to the IDE? What do you do when there's a dead end or the problem only happens in the release version of your application? That's where external tooling can take you to the next level as a developer.

By leveraging these tools and techniques you will gain access to the secret weapon of senior developers and consultants. This will make you a better developer and a happier one. Stop treating debugging like throwing out the garbage and treat it as a skill that you should improve.

In the following modules we cover:

* Debugging Theory - Ever spent all night on a bug only to find out it was a "stupid" thing that you missed in the beginning? We all have! There's a systematic process for tracking an issue that reduces the chance of this recurring.

* Code - This isn't a course on coding. You should know how to do that before you start. But how do you write code that's easier to debug? Code that fails in predictable ways. Code whose failures are easy to understand and track. Code that doesn't drain your bank account because it overuses cloud resources.

* Kubernetes - Not only is Kubernetes hostile to debugging, it does that on a scale that creates its own set of problems. Add the complexity of production debugging to the mix and we've got a new set of problems.

* Serverless - Kubernetes has an ephemeral state problem, serverless takes that problem to a completely new level.

* Fullstack - As we chase a bug we need to venture outside our comfort zone. To tiers and tools we might not be as comfortable with. In this module we'll discuss debugging the frontend and the database to create a tongs motion around the bug.

* Observability - Production debugging is really about observability. Yet so many of us leave these tools to the DevOps team. In this module we'll cover these tools from a developer perspective.

The full course includes more than 5 hours of video material.

00:00 Introduction
00:10 Fail-Safe vs. Fail-Fast
00:55 Which One?
01:28 Microservices Include Fail-Safe
02:01 But not Universally
02:18 Easier to Catch Bugs
02:51 Easier to Fix
03:17 Fail-Safe Has its Place
03:57 Hybrid is Best
04:07 Fail-Fast Locally
04:19 Fail-Safe Remotely
04:58 Final Word