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DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

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Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#151

Post by peterwwillis »

walshemj wrote: post #114
jascii wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In our organisation, developers have need nor clearance to access live customer data. This means they stay out of production and we have to deal with breakage. Usually I can just revert to an earlier version and file a bug report, sometimes I have to cherry pick. Having developers "fix" things in production under time-stress at 3am without proper code review sounds like extremely poor practice.

So you have some one every shift who is familiar with every part of a complex system and the requisite programming languages. And reverting part way through a monthy telco billing run might not be the best idea. And in my case they also looked after online services and other systems.

Preventing calling the devs requires dev to front-load ops. Ops needs triage documents, remediation strategies, architectural and workflow diagrams, dependency charts, distributed tracing, intelligent logging, custom application metrics, and tests they can run during incidents to isolate causes.

The devs can do all of this on their own, teach ops how to use it, and then they'd only be called when it was a code issue. But as a dev, you probably don't know all of the above, so ops has to go to dev and be like, "hey y'all, if you don't want to be called, this is what we need."

And this is what DevOps is intended to fix: get everyone in a room, talk about problems, find solutions among everyone. If your org isn't doing this, you can start the change.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#152

Post by christopoulos »

Retric wrote: post #120
christopoulos wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I understand. While I’ve never only attributed that to Agile alone, but also this sort of brogrammer-code-is-the-real-product, it sometimes feels like a maturing industry sort of rolled back into its teenage years. Diagrams? Solution models (up front thinking)? Document for future reference? Nah, we don’t want to do that. It’s sad. Just recently had an experience like this with developers I manage. I do loathe t…

A significant chunk of software is a dead simple one off and does not need much in the way of design or maintenance. At the other end you have software that risks human lives and or billions in damages. Picking the right process for where each project fits on that continuum is surprisingly difficult. Cowboy coding can be anything from a horrific idea to the most efficient setup, unfortunately people are rarely flexib…

That’s why I always push the message that we choose the right amount of bureaucracy for the task at hand. Simple change / feature? No need to make a lot of documents for that? Fluffy idea that several people needs to work on? We need some mocks, diagrams and take requirements from client.

I think that’s a healthy way of doing it, but sadly many almost have to be pushed to do it, even with bigger things.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#153

Post by z9e »

delian66 wrote: post #150
0xEFF wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software engineering is about writing code, devops is about writing yaml files and keying into functionality that was implemented by software engineers. This attitude is the ultimate reason for dysfunctional development teams and the source of the barrier between operations and development. It’s also toxic.

It is also true.

And it’s also not true. There’s a spectrum with this title in the context of skill like any profession.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#154

Post by scarface74 »

gerbilly wrote: post #148
scarface74 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what do you use to configure your actual resources - like creating your network infrastructure, load balancers, VMs, dns entries, etc.

I use ansible to provision Centos 7 instances, and then I use another playbook to install and configure stuff on them like haproxy, bind 9, etc... This leaves me in complete control and keeps prices low because I only ever use vanilla instances. I'm not on Amazon right now, but when I was I used to use ansible to configure networking on it and security groups etc, but I would always try to keep the vendor specific st…

If you’re using Amazon as a glorified colo, you’ve got the worse of both worlds. You’re spending more on infrastructure and you’re not taking advantage of managed services to decrease the time and staff you spend on babysitting infrastructure. There is a lot more to AWS than VMs.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#155

Post by dwd »

bfrydl wrote: post #47
viklove wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the reason. Software engineering is about writing code, devops is about writing yaml files and keying into functionality that was implemented by software engineers.

Describing ops as “writing yaml files” is like describing software engineering as “typing.”

There seems to be an overvaluation of the time spent typing.

Does anyone spend any time thinking, researching, planning, designing or communicating?

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#156

Post by noknownsender »

caymanjim wrote: post #137

DevOps absolutely existed when the author started as a developer. It was just called systems administration back then. There's been a focus on developer-specific systems administration over the past decade, and a particular developer-focused role has been carved out and labeled "DevOps", but make no mistake: it is systems administration. Just a niche within it. When I mention "systems administration" to younger cowor…

So I should probably talk to HR about changing my title from Systems Administrator to something more in vogue?

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#157

Post by scarface74 »

riccardomc wrote: post #140
viklove wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly the reason. Software engineering is about writing code, devops is about writing yaml files and keying into functionality that was implemented by software engineers.

Right, just like telescope building is about making lenses and hollow tubes, astronomy is about looking at the sky and keying into the functionality that was implemented by telescope makers. I believe you would benefit from a different perspective because this vision is partial at best. The distinction between who builds system and tools and who uses them is subtle and often these roles are interchangeable. Both have…

Alan Kay said

People who are really serious about software should make their own hardware.

That is no different from people who call themselves “software architects”. You can’t build great software architectures if you don’t know how to build and optimize the underlying architecture it runs on and how to build the pipelines that put the code on those systems.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#159

Post by weberc2 »

delian66 wrote: post #150
0xEFF wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Software engineering is about writing code, devops is about writing yaml files and keying into functionality that was implemented by software engineers. This attitude is the ultimate reason for dysfunctional development teams and the source of the barrier between operations and development. It’s also toxic.

It is also true.

It’s not meaningfully true at all. The problems I deal with as a DevOps engineer are much broader, more abstract, more interdependent, and the solutions much less established than those that I dealt with as an SE. Unless you’re an SE in some particularly complex domain with especially limited resources (which are essentially attributes of DevOps work—SE work applied to a difficult domain under tighter-than-usual constraints), DevOps is probably the more advanced role.

Re: DevOps didn’t exist when I started as a developer

#160

Post by gerbilly »

scarface74 wrote: post #154
gerbilly wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use ansible to provision Centos 7 instances, and then I use another playbook to install and configure stuff on them like haproxy, bind 9, etc... This leaves me in complete control and keeps prices low because I only ever use vanilla instances. I'm not on Amazon right now, but when I was I used to use ansible to configure networking on it and security groups etc, but I would always try to keep the vendor specific st…

If you’re using Amazon as a glorified colo, you’ve got the worse of both worlds. You’re spending more on infrastructure and you’re not taking advantage of managed services to decrease the time and staff you spend on babysitting infrastructure. There is a lot more to AWS than VMs.

I see, so I'm doing it wrong you say?

But I never said I was using Amazon.

I'm using an internal cloud service at my company. It does not offer any managed services.

Also when I do use AWS for clients, I _sometimes_ use managed services¹, but most of those lock you in to Amazon. Some clients don't care, some do. They are paying, so I don't care either way.

In either case, I spend very little time babysitting infrastructure, just FYI, even when I use bare instances.

And in my opinion² if people aren't careful about managed services, then they won't have any OS knowledge anymore, and will just be left with product knowledge.

Sure, managed services make things easier, but they also make your sysadmin muscles weak.

1: Aurora DB for example. That one I like because there's no lock in. I can always move my tables to a standalone MySQL.

2: As someone who is 100% comfortable using bare Linux without having to use containers, managed services, control panels or even google searches to keep my stuff running, and have been doing so since the early 90s.

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