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Crazy thing about this and is frustratingly obvious, as I become a little older in IT, is that this is just a workflow problem. CI build pipelines aren't even

Crazy thing about this and is frustratingly obvious, as I become a little older in IT, is that this is just a workflow problem. CI build pipelines aren't even really in the class of workflow problems that are even difficult to implement... workflow engines start you down a rabbit hole towards different models of computation that eventually ends up with a turing machine anyway, but I digress. It's just really kind of ridiculous that the same basic problem gets re-implemented literally thousands and thousands of times across different platforms and use cases. The fact that the current implementation is based on some Frankenstein of former visual studio code and other stuff really, isn't that surprising. Of course! Standardizing workflows leads precisely to the XkCD referenced in the article, in standards produced by the workflow vendors of of course been horrendous and focused on preserving or enhancing market share, and we're done in the era of XML. The issue of course is that workflows are an "Enterprise" feature and solution. Perhaps someday in the halcyon future someone will actually address a useful cross platform workflow model I could conserve algorithms, processes, techniques, and maybe even plugins. Because right now the workflow engine is balkanized across every single CI platform.

marcosdumay 3y ago
> It's just really kind of ridiculous that the same basic problem gets re-implemented literally thousands and thousands of times across different platforms and use cases Why not? It's incredibly easy and quick to implement one, why not just make one perfectly fit for your use case every time? The actual issue here is people insisting on offshoring that implementation to GitHub, so that they deal with a brittle, badly defined interface that is not aligned with their needs, instead of just starting with a simple engine and reimplementing whatever they need. It's actually the opposite problem that standards were meant to solve.
- baq 3y ago
  > It's incredibly easy and quick to implement one, why not just make one perfectly fit for your use case every time? Look around, it’s so easy there are corpses of companies and projects all around the industry.
  - marcosdumay 3y ago
    You mean companies that failed because they implemented their own build and deploy scripts? Their own CI/CD workflow engine? Or for trying to sell a workflow engine? Because I can imagine why almost nobody could be able to do the third one.
- AtlasBarfed 3y ago
  You THINK it's easy. A nice clean set of boxes in a line with arrows. ... until you get branching. Exceptions/error branching. Subflows. Suddenly, you have a fully turing complete engine. The modern compromise is a DAG that hopefully guides a workflow to completion a la the halting problem. Anyway, there are a ton of piss poor ones with too many bespoke interfaces.

marcosdumay 3y ago

> It's just really kind of ridiculous that the same basic problem gets re-implemented literally thousands and thousands of times across different platforms and use cases Why not? It's incredibly easy and quick to implement one, why not just make one perfectly fit for your use case every time? The actual issue here is people insisting on offshoring that implementation to GitHub, so that they deal with a brittle, badly defined interface that is not aligned with their needs, instead of just starting with a simple engine and reimplementing whatever they need. It's actually the opposite problem that standards were meant to solve.

baq 3y ago
> It's incredibly easy and quick to implement one, why not just make one perfectly fit for your use case every time? Look around, it’s so easy there are corpses of companies and projects all around the industry.
- marcosdumay 3y ago
  You mean companies that failed because they implemented their own build and deploy scripts? Their own CI/CD workflow engine? Or for trying to sell a workflow engine? Because I can imagine why almost nobody could be able to do the third one.
AtlasBarfed 3y ago
You THINK it's easy. A nice clean set of boxes in a line with arrows. ... until you get branching. Exceptions/error branching. Subflows. Suddenly, you have a fully turing complete engine. The modern compromise is a DAG that hopefully guides a workflow to completion a la the halting problem. Anyway, there are a ton of piss poor ones with too many bespoke interfaces.