<story><title>XML is the future</title><url>https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>I would phrase almost the same idea from the opposite angle: focus on the fundamentals that never change, and view the trends in terms of how they relate to those fundamentals.&lt;p&gt;But also, those are some pretty odd comparisons. For sure Ansible and Terraform aren&amp;#x27;t directly comparable. If anything they&amp;#x27;re complementary. Terraform provisions machines (and also infra, etc), and Ansible configures provisioned machines.</text></item><item><author>hardwaresofton</author><text>&amp;gt; Look I&amp;#x27;m not even complaining. But it feels like I&amp;#x27;m stuck in a Franz Kafka novel. We just keep changing and changing the same things again and again because that&amp;#x27;s the new way to do. Big distraction. Destroys your workflow. Forget about all the util scripts you wrote last 6 months being useless.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s how I stay sane -- I focus on the changes. For the technologies that you noted, here are some good questions that come to mind to set them in my brain:&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between CGI scripts and Serverless?&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between Terraform and Ansible?&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between a Bash script and a Makefile ? Is one more general than the other? Does one have a considerably better interface than the other?&lt;p&gt;All the solutions &lt;i&gt;look&lt;/i&gt; the same, but the distinctions between them (even at a relatively surface level) are what help to actually tell things apart and stop the feeling of endless churn.&lt;p&gt;I think of it this way -- unlike other fields because the fruits of our research are &lt;i&gt;immediately usable&lt;/i&gt; and almost zero-cost, we&amp;#x27;re given a front seat to the frontier of experimentation. It&amp;#x27;s a water hose, and you have to determine which streams are worth turning on&amp;#x2F;off, bottling for later.</text></item><item><author>gnulinux</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been working in the tech industry in the US for about 5 years. Ever since I knew myself I&amp;#x27;ve been coding. From middle school to high school, given any problem, like Sudoku, or keeping up daily chores, my solution was Programming! Programming wasy homebase. Then I studied it in uni, thought I was kinda good at it, and loved it.&lt;p&gt;But when I started working in the industry, I realized that it&amp;#x27;s absolutely exhausting. Hype after hype, fad after fad, modern after modern, refactor after refactor. I have a workflow, I know how to build apps. Then one day director of Ops comes and completely and utterly changes the workflow. Ok fine, I&amp;#x27;m young, will learn this. Month passes, it is now Terraform. Ok fine I&amp;#x27;m young, will learn this. Now we&amp;#x27;re serverless. Ok fine, will learn. Now everything is container. Ok. Now everything microservice. K. Now turns out lambdas aren&amp;#x27;t good, so everything is ECS. OK will rewrite everything...&lt;p&gt;Look I&amp;#x27;m not even complaining. But it feels like I&amp;#x27;m stuck in a Franz Kafka novel. We just keep changing and changing the same things again and again because that&amp;#x27;s the new way to do. Big distraction. Destroys your workflow. Forget about all the util scripts you wrote last 6 months being useless.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t even know how I would do it. Maybe I would do this the same way if I had any power. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t change the fact that it&amp;#x27;s a bit ridiculous. Fun but tiring. Entertaining but exhausting. Cute but frustrating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>kitd</author><text>Lord, teach me to accept the things I cannot  change,&lt;p&gt;And use version control for the things I can ...</text></comment>
<story><title>XML is the future</title><url>https://www.bitecode.dev/p/hype-cycles</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>andrewflnr</author><text>I would phrase almost the same idea from the opposite angle: focus on the fundamentals that never change, and view the trends in terms of how they relate to those fundamentals.&lt;p&gt;But also, those are some pretty odd comparisons. For sure Ansible and Terraform aren&amp;#x27;t directly comparable. If anything they&amp;#x27;re complementary. Terraform provisions machines (and also infra, etc), and Ansible configures provisioned machines.</text></item><item><author>hardwaresofton</author><text>&amp;gt; Look I&amp;#x27;m not even complaining. But it feels like I&amp;#x27;m stuck in a Franz Kafka novel. We just keep changing and changing the same things again and again because that&amp;#x27;s the new way to do. Big distraction. Destroys your workflow. Forget about all the util scripts you wrote last 6 months being useless.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s how I stay sane -- I focus on the changes. For the technologies that you noted, here are some good questions that come to mind to set them in my brain:&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between CGI scripts and Serverless?&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between Terraform and Ansible?&lt;p&gt;- What&amp;#x27;s the difference between a Bash script and a Makefile ? Is one more general than the other? Does one have a considerably better interface than the other?&lt;p&gt;All the solutions &lt;i&gt;look&lt;/i&gt; the same, but the distinctions between them (even at a relatively surface level) are what help to actually tell things apart and stop the feeling of endless churn.&lt;p&gt;I think of it this way -- unlike other fields because the fruits of our research are &lt;i&gt;immediately usable&lt;/i&gt; and almost zero-cost, we&amp;#x27;re given a front seat to the frontier of experimentation. It&amp;#x27;s a water hose, and you have to determine which streams are worth turning on&amp;#x2F;off, bottling for later.</text></item><item><author>gnulinux</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve been working in the tech industry in the US for about 5 years. Ever since I knew myself I&amp;#x27;ve been coding. From middle school to high school, given any problem, like Sudoku, or keeping up daily chores, my solution was Programming! Programming wasy homebase. Then I studied it in uni, thought I was kinda good at it, and loved it.&lt;p&gt;But when I started working in the industry, I realized that it&amp;#x27;s absolutely exhausting. Hype after hype, fad after fad, modern after modern, refactor after refactor. I have a workflow, I know how to build apps. Then one day director of Ops comes and completely and utterly changes the workflow. Ok fine, I&amp;#x27;m young, will learn this. Month passes, it is now Terraform. Ok fine I&amp;#x27;m young, will learn this. Now we&amp;#x27;re serverless. Ok fine, will learn. Now everything is container. Ok. Now everything microservice. K. Now turns out lambdas aren&amp;#x27;t good, so everything is ECS. OK will rewrite everything...&lt;p&gt;Look I&amp;#x27;m not even complaining. But it feels like I&amp;#x27;m stuck in a Franz Kafka novel. We just keep changing and changing the same things again and again because that&amp;#x27;s the new way to do. Big distraction. Destroys your workflow. Forget about all the util scripts you wrote last 6 months being useless.&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t even know how I would do it. Maybe I would do this the same way if I had any power. But that doesn&amp;#x27;t change the fact that it&amp;#x27;s a bit ridiculous. Fun but tiring. Entertaining but exhausting. Cute but frustrating.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hardwaresofton</author><text>&amp;gt;  I would phrase almost the same idea from the opposite angle: focus on the fundamentals that never change, and view the trends in terms of how they relate to those fundamentals.&lt;p&gt;Definitely -- I&amp;#x27;d say that these questions &lt;i&gt;force&lt;/i&gt; the understanding of the fundamentals, because that&amp;#x27;s what you get down to (&amp;quot;fundamental&amp;quot;&amp;#x2F;irreconcilable differences).&lt;p&gt;The problem is that fundamentals can be similar, and sometimes the difference is elsewhere (UX&amp;#x2F;DX&amp;#x2F;perf for example).&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; But also, those are some pretty odd comparisons.&lt;p&gt;So they &lt;i&gt;are&lt;/i&gt; odd comparisons, in some sense -- but the point was to reflect the kind of questions someone who didn&amp;#x27;t know the answer would ask. Ansible and Terraform (and Salt&amp;#x2F;Puppet&amp;#x2F;Chef) are often presented in similar context and they&amp;#x27;re often confusing &lt;i&gt;precisely because they are so close but different&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;The other example (CGI vs Serverless) is situation that&amp;#x27;s somewhat more targeted towards the age discussion -- did we churn over the years for churnings&amp;#x27; sake?&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; For sure Ansible and Terraform aren&amp;#x27;t directly comparable. If anything they&amp;#x27;re complementary. Terraform provisions machines (and also infra, etc), and Ansible configures provisioned machines.&lt;p&gt;What you&amp;#x27;ve said is the usual rebuttal (and it&amp;#x27;s mostly right!), but did you know that Ansible did&amp;#x2F;does provisioning?[0] The lines aren&amp;#x27;t drawn as neatly as they seem to be.&lt;p&gt;You can build a Terraform-like experience &lt;i&gt;out of&lt;/i&gt; Ansible, if you wanted to, and it&amp;#x27;s important to know that and why you choose a tool like Terraform instead of traveling deep into Ansible land.&lt;p&gt;All that said, if you prefer, replace &amp;quot;Ansible&amp;quot; with &amp;quot;Pulumi&amp;quot; (Full Disclosure: I&amp;#x27;m firmly on the Pulumi side in the Terraform vs Pulumi debate).&lt;p&gt;[0]: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.ansible.com&amp;#x2F;ansible&amp;#x2F;latest&amp;#x2F;collections&amp;#x2F;index_module.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow noreferrer&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.ansible.com&amp;#x2F;ansible&amp;#x2F;latest&amp;#x2F;collections&amp;#x2F;index_mo...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>