The author of this text is a software developer who initially struggled with understanding observability but eventually learned about OpenTelemetry and its benefits for modern apps. They created a beginner-friendly resource to instrument their own apps using OpenTelemetry, which includes tutorials and code snippets. The author explains how distributed tracing shows the path a request takes through an application, helping developers identify performance issues. They demonstrate how to spin up a simple movie app with two microservices, use Docker to install Zipkin for tracing, and export data to New Relic using the OpenTelemetry Collector. The author provides a step-by-step guide on how to instrument an app with OpenTelemetry, including setting up a trace provider, adding a span processor, using Docker to spin up Zipkin, and exporting data to New Relic.