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DevOps is broken

blog.massdriver.cloud

241–250 of 363 posts

Re: DevOps is broken

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t hire devops, I hire infra engineers, build engineers, release engineers and: backend engineers. This is a great way to do it. There seems to be a correlation between unnecessary product complexity and unnecessary corporate complexity. Being direct about roles goes a long way towards simplifying corporate complexity.

That depends on the complexity of the development lifecycle, doesn’t it? If a single person can maintain it, having three different roles would mean unnecessary corporate complexity.

Not sure what you mean with "development lifecycle" exactly. Aren't maintenance and development both part of the product lifecycle?

Re: DevOps is broken

#242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Theres no large conspiracy Yes, there is a network of small to medium sized ones. > things that were near impossible to build in the past. Were they necessary in the past?

This is like asking whether innovation is necessary. Capitalism pushes us towards it. New forms of efficiency and value are unlocked by moving further out on the software complexity curve. Not everything thats complex works well, but some of it does solve the problem

What's "capitalism" in this context, and what's its actual connection to software development practices? What are "forms of efficiency" and "forms of value", and how does complexity "unlock" them?

Re: DevOps is broken

#243
post #31

DevOps is bullshit in the same way that Agile is bullshit. So, it's actually not at all, but just has become so fashionable that the term is sufficiently abused to become almost useless.

Agree. Both devops and agile were about empowering developers, the ones who actually make the products people use. And then managers and management consultants got hold of the terms and mutated the ideas and they ossified into "best practices" that get in everyone's way.

Re: DevOps is broken

#245

Hard disagree but Mandy Rice-Davies applies. Some interpretation of DevOps may be BS, e.g. >> Need a database? File a ticket with DevOps. That does seem like a bit short of the mark. E.g. that should be automated provisioning in 2018, never mind in 2022. Counter points as to why DevOps is not BS: Today there's just an acceptance that you version your code in VCS, it wasn't always that way. "Hey, this doesn't look rig…

>> Need a database? File a ticket with DevOps.

> That does seem like a bit short of the mark. E.g. that should be automated provisioning in 2018, never mind in 2022.

Serious question, as I think this has been part of my thought process in the challenges of platform engineering: what does it mean to automatically provision a database?

I can think of lots of different examples that are insufficient in one way or another (I think I'm mostly talking UX here, and how many questions the user has to answer in one way or another / infrastructure as code, not should the user have to apt-get install postgres, which should I think rather obviously be automated.) But if infrastructure as code is defined as automation, this can conflict with the developers who don't want to learn terraform and thus still leads to "file a ticket with devops"

Re: DevOps is broken

#246
post #17

I’ve long held this opinion but I consistently get drowned out. DevOps has different meaning depending on who you’re talking to, even some definitions that appear similar are different in nuanced but important ways. All “devops” as a job title has done has muddy responsibilities and given many folks the wrong impression of what an operations discipline should be. There is also a lot of rewriting of history that gets…

The extent of devops for your developers should be: 1. Push code to an automated pipeline 2. I understand that the automated pipeline may need input from me in order to run successfully. Beyond that, you need other people building the "platform" that they're deploying to (for the most part). Probably the ideal example here is Heroku. Your devs shouldn't be required to do all of the actual ops stuff. They need access…

The article has a solid solution ;)

Re: DevOps is broken

#247
post #17

I’ve long held this opinion but I consistently get drowned out. DevOps has different meaning depending on who you’re talking to, even some definitions that appear similar are different in nuanced but important ways. All “devops” as a job title has done has muddy responsibilities and given many folks the wrong impression of what an operations discipline should be. There is also a lot of rewriting of history that gets…

The extent of devops for your developers should be: 1. Push code to an automated pipeline 2. I understand that the automated pipeline may need input from me in order to run successfully. Beyond that, you need other people building the "platform" that they're deploying to (for the most part). Probably the ideal example here is Heroku. Your devs shouldn't be required to do all of the actual ops stuff. They need access…

I expect my developers to troubleshoot a failing pipeline too. The pipeline is part of the "ops platform" they're expected to work with.

Re: DevOps is broken

#248
post #221
post #17

I’ve long held this opinion but I consistently get drowned out. DevOps has different meaning depending on who you’re talking to, even some definitions that appear similar are different in nuanced but important ways. All “devops” as a job title has done has muddy responsibilities and given many folks the wrong impression of what an operations discipline should be. There is also a lot of rewriting of history that gets…

I don't understand how seemingly 90% of developers, can't do anything outside of their narrow scope of experience. Writing a shell script? Throw a temper tantrum, that's devops job! Have to work with legacy code? I can't believe this! Especially seniors and beyond. They force leetcode interviews they somehow pass or are grandfathered through and gatekeep "trash devs" by slamming gotchas about how the whiteboarded cod…

Sounds like medium or bigger sized company office politics.

At smaller companies the title tends to be only a title and many people are basically full-stack and know a bit of everything. And you're trading hats to get jobs done.

Re: DevOps is broken

#249

I have bewilderingly tried to discern why software development continues to grow more and more complex. It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when we talked about languages and OSes and libraries as if they made a difference on how much you could get done with as little people and cognitive load as possible (the claims were very much overrated, but the point was we acted like it mattered). And then it started…

I like the Uncle Bob explanation: the number of developers has a doubling rate of ~5 years due to the constant entry of new developers [1]. Over time, the number of inexperienced developers far outweighs the experienced ones. Inexperienced developers naturally gravitate toward complexity because they don't know any better.

Couple that with a social drift toward hyper-specialization. That sort of hierarchy naturally creates minds that don't think at the systems level. This is the general theme of Buckminster Fuller's Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth: the shift toward hyper-specialization (or narrow focus) has long-term disastrous consequences.

When you couple inexperience with narrow focus, you get messes.

Part of this is to blame on the industry-standard thinking that because someone works for Company X, they're a competent, logical engineer (and should be granted authority/responsibility over essential products/projects). This is the downfall of "code tests" and "whiteboard coding." They don't evaluate for systems level thinking and so a developer with poor creativity and logic skills slips through the cracks because they're great at eeking performance out of a function which impresses the lollipop guild.

[1] https://blog.cleancoder.com/uncle-bob/2014/06/20/MyLawn.html

Re: DevOps is broken

#250
post #110
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, anytime I talk with someone about DevOps ... we end up having to hash out the entire process to really know what either of us are actually talking about. Otherwise you have these situations "Yea the DevOps guy messed up the widget and nobody notic---" "Wait, what is the DevOps guy doing even touching that widget.... what is even DevOps to you?" "Bro that widget IS DevOps." -silence- Same applies to the topic…

SOA is just Spaghetti Architecture. I haven't seen an implementation that convinces me otherwise.

Microservices should be resource-oriented, not service-oriented. NetKernel takes it to the extreme, it’s a shame it hasn’t seen broader adoption.

http://resources.1060research.com/docs/IntroductionToResourc...

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