DevOps Engineer Cherwin Nooitmeer on the complexity of Kubernetes and the future of DevOps.

“The future of DevOps is going to be boring”

What is DevOps?
There are programmers that write software that need to run on computers, we call them servers. And when a programmer writes software, someone needs to put that software on the computers. So people like you and me can access facebook.com and see pictures of cats. Right?

The process from getting the software from a developer to one of the computers that Facebook has, because you can imagine, they have a lot of them. How you do that, that is where DevOps comes in.

So you write software and you have to put it in production. The gap in between, that's where my focus is. And I try to reduce that gap, so it's instant basically.

Why DevOps?
Companies have started to realize, if you have good DevOps processes you can deliver value to the customer faster. You can just outperform all competitors.

What’s the future of DevOps?
The future of DevOps, I hope, from my perspective, is going to be boring. DevOps will develop and become more mature. We will get better tools and better ways of doing things, like testing and doing infrastructure in a way that is reliable and fast. Hopefully, my job will be as a commodity so I can work on other things and add even more value to customers.

What is Kubernetes?
So what we need to do is to make sure we can run software, that we can update it, roll back things, etcetera. These are similar things that every company needs to do.

So Google came and they basically understood and standardized the way of rolling out software and deploying it to users, making sure everything works fine. They basically extracted their learnings into a product. And that product is Kubernetes. People like I use Kubernetes to build platforms so we can enable companies to deliver value to customers faster.

What I do think about Kubernetes is that when people see it, they see it’s awesome and they all try to use it. I think that's a mistake.

Is the hype real?
There’s a lot of hype around Kubernetes. But Kubernetes also adds a lot of complexity. And I think the complexity gets overshadowed by the hype. People think it’s fine and it just works and you can use it.

But what I do think, this complexity that is there is necessary. Because if you are not going to use the complexity of Kubernetes, you are going to create your own system that you need to maintain and develop. Because it's not only software that we use to service users. You also need to write software to service the servers, if that makes any sense. Right?

And if you are going to write it yourself. What happens if you hire a new guy? Now you have to explain to the new guy how your complexity works. So instead of using a complexity that everyone knows, you’re going to create your own complexity. And now you have to teach everybody about your own complexity. And then you need to maintain it.

So this is a trade-off, what are you going to do? I mean, if you have a very simple problem and can get away with having less complexity. Then maybe Kubernetes is not the right thing for you.

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