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Phrases in computing that might need retiring

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Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#71

Post by tbronchain »

I build infrastructures for small/medium size projects in a reproductible, code based, extensive and scalable way - usually cloud based. Businesses I work with need a quick and efficient solution to serve what they build, do not want to/cannot dedicate full time internal resources to it but require production ready setup that their developers are not qualified to build. Sometimes, they just require some guidance or validation. They like to call me DevOps.

DevOps, SysOps, Sysadmin, Infrastructure engineer, Cloud engineer... The title doesn't matter so much, but what I like in the term DevOps is how it links the dev side to the infra side, as the infra itself ends up being already built in a cloud environment.

I also believe there was a time when we needed to make a difference between traditional "Sysadmin" and developers who specialized in building cloud infra, but not anymore.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#72

Post by rwky »

silisili wrote: post #17

Oh man, I wish most of this would go away. RE: Agile 'We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy, and that way does not involve the word…' Which is rather hilarious, because the only people I ever hear use the word agile are the beaurocrats. RE: DevOps, I still don't know what it actually means. When I first heard the term, it wa…

I've been hired for multiple DevOps roles. For me it means Syadmin (happy Syadmin day btw) but also responsible for managing the plethora of AWS etc service, CI/CD pipelines, dealing with security audits, the occasional diving into code for back end stuff and being on hand for advice/comments.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#73

Post by abracadabra_ »

EntropyIsAHoax wrote: post #47

As a "DevOps Engineer" I strongly agree we need to stop using the term, at least as a job title. Where I work, I help automate our infrastructure management and develop tools that make it easier for product engineers to do DevOps, such as making monitoring solutions easier, injecting deployment credentials into CI/CD pipelines, abstracting certain common but complex architectures, etc... But at least half of the recr…

So a Platform Engineer, then.

DevOps is not a role, it's not tools. It's a culture.

Once the term is used outside of that, it has become useless.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#75

Post by laserlight »

So, just because people misuse the term, we should find a different term --- to be misused again? Agile is what agile manifesto defines. What the author defines sounds more like Scrum. And we can call the corporate BS, Jira-based development. Technical debt also has a very specific meaning, nothing about hobbyist programming at all.

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#76

Post by hyperman1 »

doctor_eval wrote: post #2

> "Agile: Nope, this one’s in the bin, I’m afraid. It used to mean “not waterfall” and now means “waterfall with a status meeting every day and an internal demo every two weeks”. We have to find a new way to discuss the idea that maybe we focus on the working software and not on the organisational bureaucracy…" Yup. :-(

AFAIK, waterfall was always a straw man meant to knock down. Nobody sane ever did a pure waterfall model. The model came from http://www-scf.usc.edu/~csci201/lectures/Lecture11/royce1970... and describes it as risky in that very paper. Notice diagram 2 (the waterfall), 3 (the dream) and 4(the reality).

We had expensive agile consultants coming in a bit after 2000. They were telling us the current official process, RUP, was waterfall, and we were completely misguided. Of course, this was a typical management-saves-face move: Devs were asking for using RUP as described (i.e. more iterative), even if managers expressly forbade the use of agile processes up to that point. RUP as intended was basically doing 2 to 4 week iterations, each a mini-waterfall (thou shall not call them sprints).

Somehow, expensive consultants delivered an agile more waterfall than RUP.

The actual value from RUP was a clear description of who does what, who requires what, and how do we call each part of the process. The Agile consultants saw no value in this, and gave us service based service service services implemented by services. We had standups reused as meetings to find out if service was meant as ITIL/SOAP/process/micro/business/something nobody ever heard of. This distinction was important so we could fill in all the important agile documents, which were not meant to be read by anyone, but filling them in was the only way us lowly peasants would not stray from the true golden agile path.

Oh well, if there is an ASCII code for the END-OF-RANT character, you can place it here: >

Re: Phrases in computing that might need retiring

#77

Post by autoexec »

I was expecting "master" and "slave" to show up since I've seen that argument being made (https://www.eetimes.com/its-time-for-ieee-to-retire-master-s...), but I have a hard time taking it seriously.

I agree about AI though. The rush to exploit the phrase as a marketing term has killed it's original meaning. Once we actually have AI we're going to need something else to call it. I've always kind of liked the distinction Mass Effect made between Virtual Intelligence and Artificial Intelligence/Synthetic Intelligence, but I guess it's too late to start calling what we have now VI. Synthetic/Inorganic Intelligence is still on the table for the real thing though and it'd be better than something like AI+ or AI 2.0

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