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Kubernetes gives you a standard way of describing and running distributed systems. It makes it easy to share distributed systems with others via a package manag

Kubernetes gives you a standard way of describing and running distributed systems. It makes it easy to share distributed systems with others via a package manager. It makes it easier for companies to offer tools/services that simplify the management of distributed systems. It allows you to quickly get up and running with a complex distributed system (e.g. Kafka, Spark, Distributed Deep Learning) without relying on a cloud provider service (not always an advantage, but for some companies being cloud-mobile has substantial benefits). That is valuable so I can't see k8s disappearing unless there's a better distributed OS - I don't see one right now.

AndrewBissell 7y ago
The title is maybe a bit clickbaity -- the author does not mean that it will "disappear" in the literal sense, but rather that in the vast majority of cases it will become a managed service which end users don't really touch, much in the same manner as today's data center hardware. All the things you describe as its advantages could possibly be realized with a simpler interface provided and managed by a third party.
- solidasparagus 7y ago
  Maybe, but that doesn't make much sense to me. Kubernetes is an OS like Linux. You work with and think about Linux whether you're running your own hardware or relying on a cloud service like EC2 or even Lambda. The same will happen to k8s to the point where you will eventually not have to do any of the management - but you will still need to understand how the system works, the primitives it offers and how to use it. And while k8s is painfully complicated, there were simpler alternatives and they lost. Maybe that's just a matter of execution or Google hype, but more likely it's because you need a complicated standard when you want to be able to describe most distributed systems.
  - AndrewBissell 7y ago
    I definitely see your side of the argument and I am sympathetic to the idea that (most of) the complexity of Kubernetes is inherent to the problem domain. That said, lots of devs do get by with knowledge of only the barest essentials of Linux.

AndrewBissell 7y ago

The title is maybe a bit clickbaity -- the author does not mean that it will "disappear" in the literal sense, but rather that in the vast majority of cases it will become a managed service which end users don't really touch, much in the same manner as today's data center hardware. All the things you describe as its advantages could possibly be realized with a simpler interface provided and managed by a third party.

solidasparagus 7y ago
Maybe, but that doesn't make much sense to me. Kubernetes is an OS like Linux. You work with and think about Linux whether you're running your own hardware or relying on a cloud service like EC2 or even Lambda. The same will happen to k8s to the point where you will eventually not have to do any of the management - but you will still need to understand how the system works, the primitives it offers and how to use it. And while k8s is painfully complicated, there were simpler alternatives and they lost. Maybe that's just a matter of execution or Google hype, but more likely it's because you need a complicated standard when you want to be able to describe most distributed systems.
- AndrewBissell 7y ago
  I definitely see your side of the argument and I am sympathetic to the idea that (most of) the complexity of Kubernetes is inherent to the problem domain. That said, lots of devs do get by with knowledge of only the barest essentials of Linux.