4 ms·
What does a lizard have to do with SRE?
by xyst 7y ago
What does a lizard have to do with SRE?
- sethvargo 7y agoGreat question. As an O'Reilly author myself, I can tell you that we have no control over the animal selected. There's a fun animal selection process, but the publisher's decide. Disclaimer - I work for Google and worked on this book.
- pkaye 7y agoJust curious deals like this work. Does Google pay O'Reilly for the editing and typography or does O'Reilly make money by selling the book themselves.
- dielectrikboog 7y agoHey, at least you didn’t get Cthulhu on the cover, like Andrew Lombardi’s WebSocket.
- l9i 7y agoConfirmed. I was hoping for the platypus but it turns out it was already taken anyway. You can check out the whole O'Reilly menagerie at https://www.oreilly.com/animals.csp https://www.oreilly.com/animals.csp. (disclaimer: I worked on the book)
- mbrd 7y agoO'Reilly-published books often have an animal on the cover. I don't think they are picked for relevance to the topic (even most of the Python books don't have pythons!) https://www.oreilly.com/content/a-short-history-of-the-oreilly-animals/ https://www.oreilly.com/content/a-short-history-of-the-oreil...
- mtberatwork 7y ago> even most of the Python books don't have pythons! Well, that actually makes sense since Python derives its name from Monty Python and not the reptile.
- amouat 7y agoThere's usually some reference, but it can be a bit cryptic. All the Docker books have a whale.
- ivzhh 7y agoIt seems [Edie Freedman](https://www.itworld.com/article/2708642/history-of-the-o-reilly-cover-animals.html https://www.itworld.com/article/2708642/history-of-the-o-rei...) chooses the animal based on the description from the authors: > I ask the authors to supply me with a description of the topic of the book. What I am looking for is adjectives that really give me an idea of the "personality" of the topic.... Sometimes it is based on no more than what the title sounds like. (COFF, for example, sounded like a walrus noise to me.) Sometimes it is very much linked to the name of the book or software. (For example, vi, the "Visual Editor," suggested some beast with huge eyes). My guess is the animals of the series is kind of decided by the first animal. Several Kubernetes (operators)/Cloud-native books are with birds on front page.
- xenyal 7y agoThis is a far-fetched guess: self-healing systems are one aspect of SRE. And since some species of lizards can grow back appendages, that's where the connection might be?
- broth 7y agoThere's also the traits of adaptation and resilience.
- bbeekley 7y agoIf it's a monitor lizard, then monitoring is a big part of SRE.
- zhengyi13 7y agoI believe that was in fact the specific inspiration for the first book's lizard.
- argvee 7y agoO'Reilly assigns the animals from the menagerie. The first two SRE books had lizards, so this book is consistent with that. It is a Chinese Water Dragon... now I had asked for a fire dragon since that's my Chinese zodiac sign. That's not a real thing, so I'm pretty satisfied with our water dragon!