Coté's Commonplace Book - Issue #48
How was your week?
A free conference I helped make: DevOps Loop, Oct 4th
Next month is DevOps Loop. It's a conference I've been helping out together and it has an outstanding talk list. I've worked closely with several speakers to curate talks on things I'm interested in and that they're excited about. Register and attend for free, it's October 4th.
And now, the stuff:
Original content
Software Defined Talk #319: We need two elephants — www.softwaredefinedtalk.com
This week we discuss the history of Docker, the rise of Kubernetes and the launch of AWS EKS Anywhere. Plus, how much lumber fits in a cubic meter…?
Desire Paths, or, cloud native enterprise architecture
Matt Stine, at JPMC, formally at Pivotal, wrote up a good take on enterprise architecture. It captures shifting from a mindset of policing and enforcing to partnering and providing. Treating developers as customers, not enemies:
Make the right thing easy.
Study what developers need - treat them as customers, not inmates.
It's not just developers, but the product part, maybe even the business.
Capture patterns, configs, for example, as done in Tanzu Application Platform, or codified in PaaSes.
A PaaS like the Tanzu Application Service will do this, or you can build on-top of k8s with the Tanzu Application Platform. Both are designed to make the right thing easy.
Relevant to your interests
I'm remembering how to keep track of and put links into the newsletter tool, so pardon the weirdness of the listing here.
Revenue Growth for Container Management Software Gartner expects that up to 15% of enterprise applications will run in a container environment by 2024, up from less than 5% in 2020, hampered by application backlog, technical debt and budget constraints. “The bottleneck will be the speed at which applications can be refactored and/or replaced,” Mr. Warrilow said.
Lots of quotes and comments from THE PEOPLE WHO WERE THERE.
"Walk the walk"
Great list of accomplishments, and a reminder that The Boss has empower the change agents to make changes. Either that, or The Boss has to do it themselves. Or: iyou wanted to change because you don't like how you're currently doing things. So stop doing those things.
This starts with funding, which means The Boss has to fix procurement, compliance, and finance/planning. Your change agents can't do they.
Otherwise:
At this point, I am just tired of continuously chasing support and money to do my job. My office still has no billet and no funding, this year and the next.
"What Docker is edging into is the concept of progressive pricing."
Docker is asking large companies to pay for its software. Funding has to come from somewhere, after all, and those customers have it.
There are two principles at work here: an organisation of that size isn't going to be impacted by paying for the software and, intriguingly, it's fair to ask them to do so.
And, kind of related.
Take the notes in the moment
I’ll give you the lesson I have learned and learned again, but still fail to apply far too frequently: write your notes and thoughts down as soon as possible. Sometimes when I’m reporting, especially when my schedule is packed and I’m tired, I get lazy and let my smartphone do the work, figuring I’ll just take some photos, record the conversation, and go through it all later. Then, at the end of the day, I collapse instead of jotting notes and mentally reviewing what I experienced. But, while I believe in photographing and transcribing everything (no better way to relive the interview and capture the nuances of voice, as well as details I might have missed in the moment), looking at photographs and transcripts later just doesn’t yield all the same richness that bubbles up when you sit down at the end of a long day of interviews and let your mind tell you what was important.
Mainframes, ML and digital transformation
The critics are right politically as well. Decades of personal finance advice have pinned poverty on the poor, shaming them for improper retirement savings and irresponsible personal finance. But it’s too easy to use that as an excuse for poor economic policy and fail to fix the underlying conditions that allow poverty to exist at all.
And:
On the other hand, the pandemic has created a reason to accelerate all of this. I've spoken to a big CPG company that might be perfectly happy with its ERP, except that it can't ship less than 1,000 units per order and now they want to do direct-to-consumer (this is part of the Shopify story ). I've also spoken to people at a huge retailer that was perfectly happy with its point of sale system, but discovered that it can't be extended to do ‘buy online pick up in store’. The old systems are good at the old things.
The Myth of the Myth of the Latte Millionaire
The critics are right politically as well. Decades of personal finance advice have pinned poverty on the poor, shaming them for improper retirement savings and irresponsible personal finance. But it’s too easy to use that as an excuse for poor economic policy and fail to fix the underlying conditions that allow poverty to exist at all.
Very weird
Novels written and illustrated by an “AI”
It’s possible to help more positive images pop into your mind
Training your mind to think positive thoughts.
The original's Webster English dictionary is a type of literature on its own, not just a manual, e.g.:
pathos /ˈpāˌTHäs/, n. 1. The quality or character of those emotions, traits, or experiences which are personal, and therefore restricted and evanescent; transitory and idiosyncratic dispositions or feelings as distinguished from those which are universal and deep-seated in character; — opposed to ethos.
Spotify engendered a trend that became known among the industry as "lean back listening", which refers to a listener who "thinks less about the artist or album they are seeking out, and instead connects with emotions, moods, and activities"..."The Problem with Muzak", writer Liz Pelly criticized the "chill" playlists as "the purest distillation of [Spotify's] ambition to turn all music into emotional wallpaper".
Engage with my brand!
Free! My three books on digital transformation: Changing Mindsets, The Business Bottleneck, and Monolithic Transformation. Also, check out my book of collected columns on DevOps and other enterprise IT stuff - full of jokes and snark: Digital WTF.
And, see all my great stuff over at cote.io.
