The Sailormen’s Legacy: A “Trace” of the Past

By the late 16th century, sailors were measuring speed with a chip log —  a method crucial for navigation. Knots were tied at regular intervals in a rope, with one end attached to a pie-slice-shaped piece of wood (“chip”) and flung behind the vessel. The rope played freely as the ship traveled for a fixed amount of time, which was measured using an hourglass. The number of knots that passed over the stern was counted to determine the ship’s speed, with one knot equaling one nautical mile an hour. Thus, a ship going at 15 knots could traverse 15 nautical miles in an hour. Records of these measurements were kept in a logbook, which was used to calculate the ship’s speed over a given period. This logbook was also used to record the ship’s course, weather conditions, and other relevant information. The term “log” was derived from this practice, and it has since been used in various contexts to refer to a record of events or activities.

In software engineering, the principle of logging has been refined and expanded to include “traces.” In software development, tracing represents a dynamic method of observing, debugging, and recording activities within an application, providing a more detailed, sometimes interactive, insight than traditional logging.