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I hear what you're saying, but I don't think the time spent learning Chef (or Puppet) is ever wasted. It's sort of like mastering a unix shell or getting good

I hear what you're saying, but I don't think the time spent learning Chef (or Puppet) is ever wasted. It's sort of like mastering a unix shell or getting good at automated testing: initially there is this steep learning curve where you are definitely less productive, but over time it pays huge dividends. Have you ever had to install multiple versions of some package on the same machine? Have you ever had to help a colleague debug a weird issue that was particular to their setup? Have you ever had to work on the same project from multiple platforms and some component didn't work on one of them? Have you ever had a bug only appear in production because of a platform subtlety?

hosh 14y ago
I don't think the time spent learning Chef (or Puppet) is ever wasted. Exactly! It might not look like it right now, but skills in using these tools are moving from cutting edge to essential job/contracting skills in the near future. I don't know much about the Puppet community, but I do know that within the Chef community, the learning curve is flattening. The big thing of 2012 was that we're very close to getting these VM+Chef+Berkshelf setup in a way where you can get onboarded on an existing open-source application without knowing you are using Chef under the cover. How deep you want to dive in is up to you from that point.