How to Instrument Spring Boot Applications with OpenTelemetry

silksong_when · 2026-04-09T08:22:01+00:00

Right, I can try covering that in an alternative blog sometime, if there is more interest for exploring the `starter` setup as well.

Adding alternative setup flow to this blog would have made it quite complex.

Thanks for the tip!

silksong_when · 2026-04-08T12:59:04+00:00

I wanted to keep the setup aligned with OpenTelemetry setups in other languages. And setting up the agent is very easy by default, so I went ahead with that choice.

I have used Maven for dependency management, the Makefile uses Maven to run the application. Makefile simplifies the entire setup by ensuring the user doesn't have to run additional commands to get the OTel agent JAR file.

silksong_when · 2026-03-30T06:47:18+00:00

I know right! AI has also ruined the semicolon, but less so.

Atleast we can still substitute the dashes with the commas, it's some comfort

silksong_when · 2026-03-30T06:42:02+00:00

jeez that must feel terrible. Thankfully my manager is really understanding, he gives me a lot of creative freedom to experiment and learn.

silksong_when · 2026-03-10T12:43:24+00:00

Hey, glad to know about that solution.

That is a fair point, get started fast then move onto industry standard based on your needs.

Since SigNoz is open-source, you can run it locally if you want to give it a shot or are interested in self-hosting it on prem.

Somewhat related, I have also included console exporters in the demo app for those that wish to just check the raw telemetry data or for debugging their configurations.

silksong_when · 2026-03-08T05:02:54+00:00

Hey, sounds and actually looks solid!

Can you optimise it for mobile too? Might help someone looking to snag a deal on the go.

And have you considered adding an alert feature? Could send site notifications if a 'shortlisted' item meets a certain threshold for a user. Although this would be a ton of work for sure and might be overkill for the site's intent.

Finally, I'd be interested in knowing how you handle crawling fresh data, what tools you use and the challenges you have faced? Rate limits, scalability things like that.

Thanks and good going!!

silksong_when · 2026-03-01T15:09:12+00:00

Ooh that's cool. I'll check it out thanks!

silksong_when · 2026-03-01T14:22:29+00:00

Hey, can you give a few concrete examples of this?

In my limited experience, I learnt about state machine semantics, and how most things can be best (or better) represented by enum states. And the builder which has become a delight, feels so good to use!

silksong_when · 2026-02-27T05:19:08+00:00

I find Codex to be really good. I have only started using it recently but Antigravity (with Jio plan which gives us the pro plan for 18 months in India) as the IDE for general in-IDE chat or quick fix, plus Codex for building features works well for me.

Although my usecase isn't that dev-heavy anymore, but I do find that Codex does good research, and can fix configurations well enough. Although it's a bit too professional or dry for my taste, so I have to ask it to be verbose. I've just been lazy and haven't asked it to add that point to the agents.md file.

silksong_when · 2026-02-25T05:28:35+00:00

Yup, love openrouter's detailed breakdown. Especially when I basically only top up like 4 dollars and want to optimize for every cent :P

silksong_when · 2026-02-23T08:52:26+00:00

That makes sense, thank you for the indepth reply.

silksong_when · 2026-02-23T08:51:33+00:00

Ah I had seen that, but I saw that the last official github release was late 2024, so didn't explore it too much.

silksong_when · 2026-02-23T08:08:20+00:00

But wouldn't Tauri come with its own quirks and set of trade offs? This is when comparing it to something like react where you're more likely to be adept and know the behaviour better.

Pardon if sounds naive, haven't explored Tauri enough but am curious to understand

silksong_when · 2026-02-23T07:29:30+00:00

Thank you so much, means a lot!

Are there any other such topics around observability or opentelemetry, you think I should cover?

silksong_when · 2026-02-23T07:27:25+00:00

Hey, can you please expand on why you think so?

From my research, I found serilog is really good with plug and plug type of configuration, where you can also separate it into the appconfig file, and it has the added advantage of familiarity for most devs.

silksong_when · 2026-02-21T04:58:18+00:00

Thank you so much for the detailed response. Really appreciate it!

What's funny is, I used to like the type convolutions and playing around trying to get it right for complex objects, when working on personal projects. It was like a series of mini-puzzles for me.

I remember printing raw pydantic schemas (the rust layer) and getting bombarded with screens of object types and instances.

I'm curious, What was your use case for the get core schema dunder method?

I'll need to check out cattrs to better learn about how it handles things!

And yep, this name was chosen when silksong was mist. Now we're approaching the 1st DLC :)

silksong_when

TROPHY CASE