Reading a Flame Graph, Honestly

Scheduled for next week.

The promise and the pile

Every profiler promises instant insight. Most deliver a colourful wall of boxes.

A profile you cannot act on is a screenshot, not a diagnosis.

What survived

After five years and eleven tools, exactly three habits survived: compare two profiles, look at the widest tower first, and confirm with a targeted benchmark. Everything else was decoration.

Needs: screenshot of a before/after profile, a paragraph on sampling bias.