4 ms·

Not sure I agree. If you need a container to do the things you mention you’re already in a pretty bad shape. Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understa

Not sure I agree. If you need a container to do the things you mention you’re already in a pretty bad shape. Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is.

mmt 8y ago
> Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is. That's part of the appeal, the abstraction away of all those pesky, irrelevant details. Developers just want their app to run, as has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread. That desire is understandable. So long as the abstraction isn't too leaky and nothing underneath breaks, there's no downside. It's all upside in terms of human productivity and time to market. Even introduced inefficiency (if any) is unimportant if VC money is fueling the auto-scaling. There's a popular aphorism about premature optimization. Humans are also, in general, far more expensive than machines, especially at scale, and even a mature/traditional company would ignore this at their peril. If problems do eventually crop up with containers or the toolsets around them, chances are, by then, their sheer popularity will ensure the availability of a cadre of experts who can troubleshoot. They may even understand what a container is, even if it's terribly unfashionable to admit, as is the case with operating systems today. Every new technology/tool has some growing pains and is subject to what some consider misuse (due to ignorance). That doesn't necessarily mean it's best to reject it outright.
- mirceal 8y ago
  Big fan of playing with new tech. In a safe environment where failure is an option. Don’t go betting the farm on shiny things.
  - mmt 8y ago
    "Personally" (professionally), neither am I. This kind of conservatism was formed after decades of sysadmin/ops experience. However, having acquired a strong affinity for startups, I also accept that risk (even complete, betting-the-farm risk) is totally OK, so long as that risk is taken in an informed manner. Startups, especially early ones, are a risky proposition from the get-go, and VC money tends to amplify that. The market doesn't much punish a web startup that grew like crazy but lost some user-generated content by using some "NoSQL" database when it first came out. It does, however, punish the one that failed to grow by being too conservative. That's obviously a false dichotomy, but I believe that's essentially the perception that's created, partly by characterizing new technologies as dangerous because they're new and "shiny". Ultimately, I consider mine to be a service profession and an engineering one. As such, if I think a new tech is too undesirable, it's up to me to provide an alternative that actually addresses the original problems (without offloading the burden onto my users/customers).
outworlder 8y ago
> Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is. Well, I'll bite. Do you? What is a container?
- mirceal 8y ago
  Best definition: there is no such thing as a container. When people say container they usually mean a bunch of kernel features (cgroups, namespaces, apparmor, etc) + an overlay filesystem. I played with stuff like this since the chroot jail days and knew about containers before they were cool (anyone remember lxc?).
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

Not sure I agree. If you need a container to do the things you mention you’re already in a pretty bad shape. Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is.

mmt 8y ago

> Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is. That's part of the appeal, the abstraction away of all those pesky, irrelevant details. Developers just want their app to run, as has been mentioned elsewhere in the thread. That desire is understandable. So long as the abstraction isn't too leaky and nothing underneath breaks, there's no downside. It's all upside in terms of human productivity and time to market. Even introduced inefficiency (if any) is unimportant if VC money is fueling the auto-scaling. There's a popular aphorism about premature optimization. Humans are also, in general, far more expensive than machines, especially at scale, and even a mature/traditional company would ignore this at their peril. If problems do eventually crop up with containers or the toolsets around them, chances are, by then, their sheer popularity will ensure the availability of a cadre of experts who can troubleshoot. They may even understand what a container is, even if it's terribly unfashionable to admit, as is the case with operating systems today. Every new technology/tool has some growing pains and is subject to what some consider misuse (due to ignorance). That doesn't necessarily mean it's best to reject it outright.

mirceal 8y ago
Big fan of playing with new tech. In a safe environment where failure is an option. Don’t go betting the farm on shiny things.
- mmt 8y ago
  "Personally" (professionally), neither am I. This kind of conservatism was formed after decades of sysadmin/ops experience. However, having acquired a strong affinity for startups, I also accept that risk (even complete, betting-the-farm risk) is totally OK, so long as that risk is taken in an informed manner. Startups, especially early ones, are a risky proposition from the get-go, and VC money tends to amplify that. The market doesn't much punish a web startup that grew like crazy but lost some user-generated content by using some "NoSQL" database when it first came out. It does, however, punish the one that failed to grow by being too conservative. That's obviously a false dichotomy, but I believe that's essentially the perception that's created, partly by characterizing new technologies as dangerous because they're new and "shiny". Ultimately, I consider mine to be a service profession and an engineering one. As such, if I think a new tech is too undesirable, it's up to me to provide an alternative that actually addresses the original problems (without offloading the burden onto my users/customers).

outworlder 8y ago

> Not to mention that a lot of people don’t understand what a container is. Well, I'll bite. Do you? What is a container?

mirceal 8y ago
Best definition: there is no such thing as a container. When people say container they usually mean a bunch of kernel features (cgroups, namespaces, apparmor, etc) + an overlay filesystem. I played with stuff like this since the chroot jail days and knew about containers before they were cool (anyone remember lxc?).
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]