Dev or DevOps?

I just came off a short engagement at a bank. Needless to say a rather large bank. In terms of their infrastructure the learning process was like drinking from a fire hose. Theirs was built to scale massively. So much so that it took an entirely new approach (to me at least) of how to architect a site.

Meanwhile last Friday I had lunch with a former co-worker. Amongst catching up on each others lives and discussing professional directions; I mentioned the client, their infrastructure and one or two of the core technologies that I think would be good for both of us to learn. His response was, "you want me to learn dev ops?"

What I saw at my client changed my perspective, my friend still saw things as I used to. In my past Dev Ops was something either the build team or the IT dept did. Sure you might help with their questions but they were responsible, often jealously so, of getting it deployed. That doesn't seem to be the case anymore.

Take for instance Docker, a technology I mentioned to my friend. A developer can use it to specify not only the server that his app will run on, but the entire run time environment. As a developer with a formal background this seems wasteful, all those resources just to run my one little app? However when you think about the cost to develop an custom app these days the added cost of a containerized run time platform is negligible and virtually eliminates an entire category of errors. Namely that of, "well it runs on my machine." Couple that with the idea of deployment to a cloud and scalability can be achieved easily with proper app design.

The point is that not only can the developer create a stable environment for building and testing his code, that same environment can be used, suitably modified, for testing and production.

I'm looking forward to a new assignment with a new way of looking at how to design and build for the kind of scalability I've never been challenged by before.