4 ms·

I've got a different read on this. It's always been complicated, it's just that each.. I don't want to say "generation", but roughly the same concept, grew up w

I've got a different read on this. It's always been complicated, it's just that each.. I don't want to say "generation", but roughly the same concept, grew up with and internalized and knew about the complexities of the tech stacks they learned, and so when something comes about that moves the abstraction one level higher than what people are used to, it's seen as unstable crap. This isn't some ageist kids-these-days thing, I mean that the complexity has always existed, and it's always abstracted one level higher over time. Kubernetes doesn't exist because Google and Google-adjacent engineers wanted to foist off "ooh, shiny" on the world, it exists because it solves a problem with containers at scale. Containers solve a problem with resource usage at scale, which are really just an evolution of VMs and a response to their inefficient resource usage and brittleness at scale, and even they were once seen as the new hot fancy overly-complicated thing. For context, I entered the IT workforce just as virtual machines were being introduced into the average enterprise, and a distressingly high amount of the complaints I hear about containers and k8s were being used against VMs as well. I'm curious to see where we go from k8s. What the next level of abstraction up will be.

Lucasoato 6y ago
The fact that this is similar to something already happened reassures me a little. May Lambda and other FAAS frameworks be considered the next layer of abstraction? (even if cloud providers are using containers underneath)
tharkun__ 6y ago
Wow you must be old. Like probably retiring now? VM/370 came out 49 years ago. So assuming you did a master's at university (I guess math at the time) I'd say you are definite retired by now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) (yes this is tongue in cheek sort of since you said average but you also said 'enterprise' which my cheek reads as large company :))
- edoceo 6y ago
  Bruv. You're catching downvotes for two reasons. A: ageism and B: also not realising that tools like the "old ones" used lasted decades. Release dates are a poor metric here.
  - p_l 6y ago
    to make this comparison funnier... ... the ancient equivalent of Kubernetes was released in 1973 (JES3)
  - tharkun__ 6y ago
    I get it, nobody actually got the joke. Should've put the () first lol. What I'm playing off of is that the poster probably meant when VMware and such took off in the enterprise. As one would see in my post history I know about what came before and that these things are not new in fact. And in many many cases still in use today which is your second point. What started 49 years ago is still in use on the IBM z series and all of that stuff has awesome backwards compatibility. My dad started his career with 360 assembler (as can also be seen in my post history). So I guess it's ageism in the direction of _young_ people. I hope it's them down voting. Otherwise it's misjudging peoples sense of humour ;)
kungfuscious 6y ago
Imagine k8s but all the core features you need to run MMO-level apps are the equivalent of simple Unity Engine functions like Instantiate(gameObject). I want. Maybe I help create?
Geezus_42 6y ago
What's that quote about things you grew up with are seen as infrastructure, things invented during your early adulthood are amazing, and everything after is useless crap?
timeinput 6y ago
My complaint comes from the at scale part. I don't do anything at scale. I don't have to scale. My core competency is as a library or tool builder, and often my primary deliverable is a tool or library. In the past year I got a new JR engineer on my team who was all hot and bothered with docker and k8s and he spent a month changing out CI process to be docker based. It went from a 20 line shell script to a pile of garbage. I disagreed with the decision at the time, and while a subject matter expert I'm not the team lead so I couldn't say no stop that's bad. While I'm sure k8s solves problems for Google I'm not google. My company isn't google, and my team isn't solving that class of problems so docker is useless crap for me. The person is no longer on the team. They left their docker mark, and ran off to dockerify some other project leaving a team with no container expertise and a CI pipeline that is hacks around docker bugs.
- bacongobbler 6y ago
  Sounds more like a people problem than a tech problem.
  - xorcist 6y ago
    Everything is a people problem at the end of the day.
    - Karunamon 6y ago
      This is a thought-terminating cliché. The existence of right tools for the job implies the existence of wrong tools for the job. The engineer in GP's story used the wrong tool for the job. That is a people problem. Had he used the right tool for the job, the problem would not have existed. GP wrote their CI stuff in shell to solve a tech problem, not a people problem.
- lnenad 6y ago
  Docker on its own is in most cases a great thing with a plethora of benefits. It's worth the upgrade from a 20 line shell script and I feel like you're part of the "I don't like new things gang". On the other hand it should stop there, k8s or swarm or whatever is not necessary for 90% of use cases or applications.

Lucasoato 6y ago

The fact that this is similar to something already happened reassures me a little. May Lambda and other FAAS frameworks be considered the next layer of abstraction? (even if cloud providers are using containers underneath)

tharkun__ 6y ago

Wow you must be old. Like probably retiring now? VM/370 came out 49 years ago. So assuming you did a master's at university (I guess math at the time) I'd say you are definite retired by now. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VM_(operating_system) (yes this is tongue in cheek sort of since you said average but you also said 'enterprise' which my cheek reads as large company :))

edoceo 6y ago
Bruv. You're catching downvotes for two reasons. A: ageism and B: also not realising that tools like the "old ones" used lasted decades. Release dates are a poor metric here.
- p_l 6y ago
  to make this comparison funnier... ... the ancient equivalent of Kubernetes was released in 1973 (JES3)
- tharkun__ 6y ago
  I get it, nobody actually got the joke. Should've put the () first lol. What I'm playing off of is that the poster probably meant when VMware and such took off in the enterprise. As one would see in my post history I know about what came before and that these things are not new in fact. And in many many cases still in use today which is your second point. What started 49 years ago is still in use on the IBM z series and all of that stuff has awesome backwards compatibility. My dad started his career with 360 assembler (as can also be seen in my post history). So I guess it's ageism in the direction of _young_ people. I hope it's them down voting. Otherwise it's misjudging peoples sense of humour ;)

kungfuscious 6y ago

Imagine k8s but all the core features you need to run MMO-level apps are the equivalent of simple Unity Engine functions like Instantiate(gameObject). I want. Maybe I help create?

Geezus_42 6y ago

What's that quote about things you grew up with are seen as infrastructure, things invented during your early adulthood are amazing, and everything after is useless crap?

timeinput 6y ago

My complaint comes from the at scale part. I don't do anything at scale. I don't have to scale. My core competency is as a library or tool builder, and often my primary deliverable is a tool or library. In the past year I got a new JR engineer on my team who was all hot and bothered with docker and k8s and he spent a month changing out CI process to be docker based. It went from a 20 line shell script to a pile of garbage. I disagreed with the decision at the time, and while a subject matter expert I'm not the team lead so I couldn't say no stop that's bad. While I'm sure k8s solves problems for Google I'm not google. My company isn't google, and my team isn't solving that class of problems so docker is useless crap for me. The person is no longer on the team. They left their docker mark, and ran off to dockerify some other project leaving a team with no container expertise and a CI pipeline that is hacks around docker bugs.

bacongobbler 6y ago
Sounds more like a people problem than a tech problem.
- xorcist 6y ago
  Everything is a people problem at the end of the day.
  - Karunamon 6y ago
    This is a thought-terminating cliché. The existence of right tools for the job implies the existence of wrong tools for the job. The engineer in GP's story used the wrong tool for the job. That is a people problem. Had he used the right tool for the job, the problem would not have existed. GP wrote their CI stuff in shell to solve a tech problem, not a people problem.
lnenad 6y ago
Docker on its own is in most cases a great thing with a plethora of benefits. It's worth the upgrade from a 20 line shell script and I feel like you're part of the "I don't like new things gang". On the other hand it should stop there, k8s or swarm or whatever is not necessary for 90% of use cases or applications.