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GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

iankduncan.com

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Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#181

Post by instig007 »

plqbfbv wrote: post #163

I mostly agree with the points, but I've also managed to throw AI efficiently at the problem. We're running a self-hosted GitLab -> hosted GitHub migration at my company (which to me feels a downgrade), and without LLMs I would have spent weeks just researching syntax for how to implement the requirements I had. I asked Claude to simply "translate these GL templates to GH actions, I want 1 flow for this, 1 flow for t…

> I mostly agree

> managed to throw AI efficiently

> and it mostly worked.

Looks like you're mostly doing your job, not quite there, but mostly

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#182

Post by cdaringe »

heftykoo wrote: post #98

The problem isn't CI/CD; the problem is "programming in configuration". We've somehow normalized a dev loop that involves `git commit -m "try fix"`, waiting 10 minutes, and repeating. Local reproduction of CI environments is still the missing link for most teams.

Yes AND… more. He discusses your (correct) sentiment before and during his bash temptation segment. It’s only one of the gripes, but imho this one’s the 80%/pareto

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#183

Post by cdaringe »

Dynamic flow building is something I long wanted, for which we externalized to an external service s.t we could have our dummy CI pull task on many parallel workers after an initial centralized planning step. Each worker does: while (GET /build/123/task) run $task.cmd

Very helpful for a monster repo with giant task graph

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#184

Post by plqbfbv »

instig007 wrote: post #181
plqbfbv wrote: post #163

I mostly agree with the points, but I've also managed to throw AI efficiently at the problem. We're running a self-hosted GitLab -> hosted GitHub migration at my company (which to me feels a downgrade), and without LLMs I would have spent weeks just researching syntax for how to implement the requirements I had. I asked Claude to simply "translate these GL templates to GH actions, I want 1 flow for this, 1 flow for t…

> I mostly agree > managed to throw AI efficiently > and it mostly worked. Looks like you're mostly doing your job, not quite there, but mostly

Looks like my job is ensuring stuff builds, tests and ships correctly, not learning the 100th no-design botched homegrown language that will keep changing for the next 10y until it's a different thing altogether. And because I'm one person out of two in a ~15ppl company, where time and efficiency matter, LLMs really helped out.

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#186

Post by mitchjj »

liveoneggs wrote: post #148
iberator wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what's wrong with Jenkins? It's battle tested and hardened. Works flawless even with thousands of tasks, and WORKS OUT OF THE BOX. imo top 10 best admin/devs free software written in past 25 years.

It's too old and easy-to-use for anyone to hype it up as the next cool thing.

Buildkite has been around since 2013, hardly the next hype train

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#187

Post by mitchjj »

ycombiredd wrote: post #100

I don't care if this is an advertisement for buildkite masquerading as a blog post or if this is just an honest rant. Either way, I gotta say it speaks a lot of truth.

Will absolutely confirm this is was a (lovely) surprise for the team at BK to read, not an ad or commission or anything of the sort

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#188

Post by mitchjj »

jjgreen wrote: post #126
mitchjj wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello mate, Head of Brand and Design at BK here. Thanks for the feedback, genuinely; the homepage experiment has been divisive, in a great way. Some folk love it, some folk hate it, some just can't be bothered with it. All fair. Glad that the classic site hit the mark, but a lot work to do to make that clearer than it is; we're working on the next iteration that will sunset the CLI homepage into an easter egg. Happy…

I did a BK search earlier in the article and ended on the same page, decided I couldn't be bothered to play those sort of games and clicked away. The GPs link actually looks rather interesting so I'll investigate, so take this a hate-it-folk vote.

Understandable; let me ask a a question. You don't want to play these sort of games (read a paragraph, enter a word). For you, browsing to find a compelling devtool, what makes you say, this is legit? Can you share examples of a couple of sites that do exactly what you are after?

I say that not because we wanted the CLI homepage to be 'legit', the light context there is we needed a way to quickly change direction from a previous failed initiative that added stark category marketing across the classic site... so took the opportunity to do purposefully do something very different from conventions, rightly or wrongly.

Re: GitHub Actions is slowly killing engineering teams

#189

Post by mitchjj »

sevenseacat wrote: post #142
BoorishBears wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this is off topic, but that homepage is a piece of work: https://buildkite.com I get it's quirky, but I'm at a low energy state and just wanted to know what it does... Right before I churned out, I happened to click "[E] Exit to classic Buildkite" and get sent to their original homepage: https://buildkite.com/platform/ It just tells you what it Buildkite does! Sure it looks default B2B SaaS, but more important…

oh wow, that's not good.

Would love to hear more from you on why
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