Profiling is a crucial tool for understanding performance issues in production, providing granular details about code hotspots that can help developers identify and fix problems. Modern profiling tools have advanced significantly since their inception, offering low overhead and continuous data collection, making them suitable for production use. Unlike system metrics, logging, and tracing alone, which provide only a partial view of performance, profiling offers detailed insights into specific lines of code, facilitating accurate diagnosis and resolution of issues. By leveraging profiling in conjunction with other tools like tracing, developers can gain a comprehensive understanding of their application's performance and make data-driven decisions to optimize its performance.