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I think the confusion is the difference between a box and a container: I grok that I would use a dockerfile to configure a container, and I would use chef/puppe

• shykes 13y ago
  I think the fundamental difference is that a container is built from the _outside_ (the way you would build an executable), whereas a box is configured from the _inside_ (the way you configure a physical computer). Docker is designed for the former, and Chef is designed for the latter. What causes the confusion, I think, is Docker's premise that the best executable format for software is a virtual computer encapsulating all of the program's dependencies. Because of this, the software you're running starts looking a lot like the computer it's running on - because they're both computers! It's just computers running on computers running on computers, or as Alan Kay liked to say it, "Real Computers All The Way Down" [1]. I believe things are bound to get more confusing for a while, but the result I believe will be one of computing's most exciting development. [1] http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/352182/z_programming_languages_smalltalk-80/?pp=2 http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/352182/z_programming...