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They are probably scared that when they need to change jobs, the next company will require "5 years of Kubernetes experience". So they convince everyone at thei

They are probably scared that when they need to change jobs, the next company will require "5 years of Kubernetes experience". So they convince everyone at their current company to jump into a complexity clusterfuck to see how it works "in production" and can put it on their resume. This is how the entire IT industry works today. I am fucking appalled writing config files is a noteworthy skill is 2019. So should you.

cameronbrown 7y ago
K8S is hardly just "writing config files" is it? You've still got to understand a ton of moving parts underneath before you're able to.
- falcolas 7y ago
  K8s is writing config files just like Python is writing Python Syntax. If you don't understand the underlying mechanism, either with Python or K8s yaml files, you're going to have a very bad time. Somewhat ironic side note - Asking folks to write K8s config files is exposing too much complexity for some developers I work with. And I kind of get it. Properly setting up a service with changing environment variables, secrets, ingress, API Roles, AWS IAM roles, and horizontal autoscaling can get a bit nuts.
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    Yeah, fully integrated “DevOps” at scale is a pipe dream. You will always have some segregation of dev and ops because the scope of knowledge is so different, especially today where “Ops” often means “expert in XXX cloud vendor’s product portfolio and how our operating model uses the features”. What we call “DevOps” is really a delicate balance of giving the dev teams enough rope to hang themselves while child-proofing the gallows.
    - parasubvert 7y ago
      I don’t think DevOps leaders are claiming DevOps should be fully integrated so much as there should be a culture of collaboration and empathy, shared metrics and incentives, and preference for end to end automation... rather than antagonistic “throw it over the wall”, “I’m a dev and am too important to be paged” behaviour, etc., which has nothing to do with skill specialization. Good contracts lead to good collaboration. Kubernetes provides the foundation for a solid end to end contract for managing complex systems automatically. It’s incomplete, but extendable.
      - 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
        > “I’m a dev and am too important to be paged” Also sounds too important to be dev.
    - an_d_rew 7y ago
      > What we call “DevOps” is really a delicate balance of giving the dev teams enough rope to hang themselves while child-proofing the gallows. Oh, dear, @wayoutthere, my dev team is about to hate you because I'm going to use that quote extensively over the next few weeks... (giggle...)
- gambler 7y ago
  You realize that you're commenting in a thread for a blog post that's 100% about configuration, right? There are articles like this popping up on the front page here every few days. I've never said that K8S is just about writing config files. I've said that it is appalling that wiring config files is still a technical "skill" that warrants articles and discussions in 2019. What's even more ridiculous is that most people here probably don't even see any alternatives. I've had this conversation several times and it inevitably reveals the unwavering (and irrational) belief that manually entering cryptic text somewhere is the only way to make reusable configurations. Truly, we have become the tools of our tools.
hinkley 7y ago
I really hate the term "Configuration as code" because it's not code. For most of us, code means something that can be stepped through. For many, that means stepped through in a debugger. Descriptive languages have almost never provided that facility and we don't have it with Kubernetes or Docker Swarm. Yes it's great to capture your configuration in version control. But if at the end of the day I'm staring at a config file in one window and a log file in another and waiting for enlightenment to grab me, that's not scalable and it's rigid. It also pisses me off to no end. It's essentially the Frameworks vs Libraries debate all over again. I'd much rather have something imperative. Declarative systems create a perverse incentive to keep things the way they are because it's difficult to reason about how changes affect the system, and it's virtually impossible to explore those effects. There are no guideposts you can use to apply Local Reasoning, and so there is no pressure to organize this 'code' in a manner that supports it. So as the system matures, everyone is working off of memorization. There are too few bite-sized chunks that can be learned a bit at a time. You are locked into your current way of thinking and you've locked out anyone who can bring fresh perspective. It doesn't take a genius to see this will end badly. Again. It just takes anyone with enough distance to have perspective.

cameronbrown 7y ago

K8S is hardly just "writing config files" is it? You've still got to understand a ton of moving parts underneath before you're able to.

falcolas 7y ago
K8s is writing config files just like Python is writing Python Syntax. If you don't understand the underlying mechanism, either with Python or K8s yaml files, you're going to have a very bad time. Somewhat ironic side note - Asking folks to write K8s config files is exposing too much complexity for some developers I work with. And I kind of get it. Properly setting up a service with changing environment variables, secrets, ingress, API Roles, AWS IAM roles, and horizontal autoscaling can get a bit nuts.
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  Yeah, fully integrated “DevOps” at scale is a pipe dream. You will always have some segregation of dev and ops because the scope of knowledge is so different, especially today where “Ops” often means “expert in XXX cloud vendor’s product portfolio and how our operating model uses the features”. What we call “DevOps” is really a delicate balance of giving the dev teams enough rope to hang themselves while child-proofing the gallows.
  - parasubvert 7y ago
    I don’t think DevOps leaders are claiming DevOps should be fully integrated so much as there should be a culture of collaboration and empathy, shared metrics and incentives, and preference for end to end automation... rather than antagonistic “throw it over the wall”, “I’m a dev and am too important to be paged” behaviour, etc., which has nothing to do with skill specialization. Good contracts lead to good collaboration. Kubernetes provides the foundation for a solid end to end contract for managing complex systems automatically. It’s incomplete, but extendable.
    - 0xdeadbeefbabe 7y ago
      > “I’m a dev and am too important to be paged” Also sounds too important to be dev.
  - an_d_rew 7y ago
    > What we call “DevOps” is really a delicate balance of giving the dev teams enough rope to hang themselves while child-proofing the gallows. Oh, dear, @wayoutthere, my dev team is about to hate you because I'm going to use that quote extensively over the next few weeks... (giggle...)
gambler 7y ago
You realize that you're commenting in a thread for a blog post that's 100% about configuration, right? There are articles like this popping up on the front page here every few days. I've never said that K8S is just about writing config files. I've said that it is appalling that wiring config files is still a technical "skill" that warrants articles and discussions in 2019. What's even more ridiculous is that most people here probably don't even see any alternatives. I've had this conversation several times and it inevitably reveals the unwavering (and irrational) belief that manually entering cryptic text somewhere is the only way to make reusable configurations. Truly, we have become the tools of our tools.

hinkley 7y ago

I really hate the term "Configuration as code" because it's not code. For most of us, code means something that can be stepped through. For many, that means stepped through in a debugger. Descriptive languages have almost never provided that facility and we don't have it with Kubernetes or Docker Swarm. Yes it's great to capture your configuration in version control. But if at the end of the day I'm staring at a config file in one window and a log file in another and waiting for enlightenment to grab me, that's not scalable and it's rigid. It also pisses me off to no end. It's essentially the Frameworks vs Libraries debate all over again. I'd much rather have something imperative. Declarative systems create a perverse incentive to keep things the way they are because it's difficult to reason about how changes affect the system, and it's virtually impossible to explore those effects. There are no guideposts you can use to apply Local Reasoning, and so there is no pressure to organize this 'code' in a manner that supports it. So as the system matures, everyone is working off of memorization. There are too few bite-sized chunks that can be learned a bit at a time. You are locked into your current way of thinking and you've locked out anyone who can bring fresh perspective. It doesn't take a genius to see this will end badly. Again. It just takes anyone with enough distance to have perspective.