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How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

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Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#61

Post by aero142 »

NickPollard wrote: post #18

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.

This is not the only variant of DevOps. There are companies where the developers are responsible for creating the automation scripts to deploy their code into production as services and expected to keep in running in production.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#62

Post by Terr_ »

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…

> Having developers be 'full stack' imho reduces the amount of "works on my machine".

Not necessarily, it can also be worsened. I think Conway's Law is especially appropriate here: "[O]rganizations which design systems ... are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organizations."

When everybody shares IT responsibilities "because they can", it leads to each of those developers to run their own little customized fiefdom, with subtle (or not-so-subtle) version mismatches, mysterious lurking cronjobs, and mystery-scripts that do per-app housekeeping.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#63

Post by jvoorhis »

eric_cc wrote: post #32
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…

It's more like wanting to be a painter without knowing how paint brushes are created. Ideally I don't need to know how a system is configured (to an extent, of course), I just write the code.

Or perhaps we're talking about a painter who has an irrational fear of canvases, and will only paint directly on the wall. The work takes place in production, and the results are not easily portable.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#64

Post by mrottenkolber »

NickPollard wrote: post #18

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.

Agreed. And as far as I know, 'fullstack' developer stands for being able to write high level as well as low level code. Hence the word 'stack'.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#65

Post by peterwwillis »

This is a really badly written article but I know the point he's trying to make.

DevOps is stupid because it fractures expertise and makes it more difficult to get work done. By splitting up roles you get more domain-specific knowledge, have more time to work on a single problem, and provide support for your co-workers who also have different specific roles. I would much prefer to work with specialists than generalists.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#66

Post by calinet6 »

NickPollard wrote: post #18

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.

DevOps is about improving the systems surrounding the work of software development, so that you (and the whole organization) may produce at a higher level of quality.

The OP article is entirely missing the point, and you've set it straight. DevOps and the "Full Stack Developer" are entirely separate problems. DevOps can be specialized as well.

Re: How 'DevOps' Is Killing The Developer

#67

Post by forgottenpass »

NickPollard wrote: post #18

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.

Was (Unix) ops ever not coding? I honestly don't know, I haven't been around that long. But all the old guys I know were "perl is unix duct tape" ops guys.

The older, more foundational problems were getting automated back then. Now that they're solved problems, and combined with more and more people running large and/or virtual infrastructure, a new problem domain exists around spinning up machines and deployment.

The current coding investment is infrastructure because it's the current pain point. In a decade (or whenever permanent solutions exists for infrastructure) the current way will be considered "by hand" and operations coding efforts will just move onto whatever problem is only visible now that infrastructure is no longer a time sink.

You can say that some ops is just admins running already existing software and operating everything by hand, but there will be admins doing exactly that in a decade too.

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