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How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

jeffknupp.com

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Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#11

Post by rb2k_ »

I think the idea is not necessarily to have developers run production systems, but they still should know what production looks like and at least have basic knowledge on how to configure all of the moving parts of the system.

Having developers be 'full stack' imho reduces the amount of "works on my machine". How would a developer test the software he/she is developing on if she can't at least get close to a production environment.

Automated provisioning is just one of the usual 'devops' things that I can't imagine how a proper software engineering process would work without.

I would say that at least 20% of the people I graduated with can create software that works mostly ok when they hit the little green "run" icon in Eclipse. They were however incapable of figuring out why their jar file doesn't work in tomcat on a linux server somewhere.

Usually it was because they're using a local database with root credentials instead of a remote Database with multiple users, they have some file stashed away somewhere in their classpath, they have some binary installed in $PATH that makes the whole thing work.

I think just wanting to be a developer and not know about the stack that your application runs on is like being a painter but refusing to buy paint because you can't see what going to the store has to do with painting.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#12

Post by drdaeman »

chronid wrote: post #2

I don't really think a good developer can replace a good sysadmin. The reverse is true too, this is not a flamebait! :P I don't see "DevOps" as a way to replace some roles - but as a way to make everyone work better together. Instead of living each in their own bubble (and in my - pretty limited I admit - experience it always) everyone has to know, at least a little, what someone else does. It really helps everyone a…

I don't think that's completely true. A good developer must have a good knowledge of the stack he's working on. So he should be capable of managing that stack, shall the necessity arise.

However, it's obviously better to separate matters and offload management/administration tasks to a separate team/person. Thus, a good developer in a good company (which has a separate sysadmin roles) indeed can't really replace good sysadmin because the latter has niche practical knowledge on handling various situations (especially emergencies) quickly.

Nonetheless, one can be both a good developer and a good sysadmin at the same time.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#13

Post by teacup50 »

The author couldn't be more off-base is his understanding of how devops came to be, and his attitude is exactly the kind of cost-ineffective developer behavior that led to the partial unification of development and operations to begin with.

It has nothing to do with limited startup resources, and everything to do with managing externalities.

Specifically, developers have an enormous amount of control over the stability and deployability of their software: technical decisions made at almost all levels of the stack directly and significantly impact the costs of QA and Operations.

The people best suited to automating deployment and ensuring code quality are the people writing the code.

If you entirely externalize the costs of those two things , natural human laziness takes over, and developers punt bugs and deployment costs to the external QA and operations teams, ballooning the overall cost to the company.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#14

Post by [deleted] »

rb2k_ wrote: post #11

I think the idea is not necessarily to have developers run production systems, but they still should know what production looks like and at least have basic knowledge on how to configure all of the moving parts of the system. Having developers be 'full stack' imho reduces the amount of "works on my machine". How would a developer test the software he/she is developing on if she can't at least get close to a productio…

[deleted]

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#15

Post by dsjoerg »

"All too common a question now, can you imagine interviewing a chef and asking him what portion of the day he actually devotes to cooking?"

Yes. Chefs also do shopping, menu planning, prep, hiring, firing, marketing, and schmoozing with patrons. Source: I know a chef.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#16

Post by antocv »

rb2k_ wrote: post #11

I think the idea is not necessarily to have developers run production systems, but they still should know what production looks like and at least have basic knowledge on how to configure all of the moving parts of the system. Having developers be 'full stack' imho reduces the amount of "works on my machine". How would a developer test the software he/she is developing on if she can't at least get close to a productio…

Jesus.

Such people exist and call themselves developers? Ah man.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#17

Post by joshlegs »

nailer wrote: post #7

In my own experience I don't think developers were ever pushed to become devops (as the article asserts). Instead, about 40% what was called 'sys admins' were pushed to become devops. The 'sys admin who knew cfengine' became a 'devops person who knew ansible'. Deploys and cloud APIs just became another thing to automate. The bottom 60% - the shit ones who got paid 120,000GBP to copy paste commands they didn't underst…

from what I've seen, the term 'devops' is generally used to pay a developer less than you would otherwise while getting more from them. I'm not sure how the math of that works out, but based on what I've seen, that's what happens.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#18

Post by NickPollard »

DevOps isn't amount making Developers be Ops guys. It's about the fact that automation eats everything, and a significant part of 'ops' is now coding.

A DevOps person isn't someone who develops, and who does Ops. It's someone who does only Ops, but through Development.

It's not about start ups vs Enterprise, it's about 1 person writing programs or 5 people doing things by hand.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#20

Post by leccine »

The guys is missing the point by 10000 miles. DevOps is about getting together with devs and focus on best practices from day one. Keep in mind that you need to deploy your software in a timely, reliable manner, that is going to run on a network of computers, where part of your system might be down or showing elevated latency. I could not believe how non-trivial were these things until I have seen it with my own eyes that most of the software out there still has the following assumptions: zero latency network with unlimited bandwidth, uptime for servers is 100%, memory and CPU is something you can keep adding to computers. My experience is that when people are talking about DevOps what they really mean is site reliability or systems engineers, people who understand networks and operating systems in depth and can read and write code yet they primary focus is not deliver customer facing services, more like develop tools which can improve deployments, automate error prone processes and optimize/tune operating systems for better performance. In my humble opinion is that developers should be aware of the architecture of the system they are writing software for, but it seems we need another breed of engineers who are more focused on that as of today. Lets call them DevOps... :)
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