DevOps: A New Approach to An Old Problem

This idea is as old as systems; obviously, the distinction between "operators" and "developers" is a modern phenomenon, but even in the '90s, you had to be a systems coder to run (say) a competitive ISP (the only way we managed to get on the Freenix top 100 Usenet rankings was by independently inventing the INN history cache, for example; the only way to give our customers dynamic DNS was to code a hook into Livingston RADIUS).

So... I'd say DevOps isn't so much a new idea so much as it is a critique of the industry trend towards operators and admins who deal with software as if it's shrink-wrapped COTS. That's a criticism worth making.

For Hacker News, the better thing for us to be talking about, and something that is a genuinely new idea (I credit Patrick McKenzie for it, but he's better read than me and probably has 3-4 people who deserve it more) is MarkDev: software engineering applied to the problems of marketing.

If you've ever spent a dev cycle on your CMS, designing metrics, inventing feedback channels for your application, engineering search engine positioning --- you're doing MarkDev. Unlike Dev/Ops, where the dividing wall is flimsy and transparent, the wall between dev and marketing is 10,000 feet high, made of stone, and decorated with the skulls and entrails of the founders of a hundred VC-backed startups.