I tweeted earlier around "why use k8s at all", and didn't actually get the firestorm that I expected. (Lost a LOT of followers though.)

There were some good answers, but also a lot of answers that felt like "because it's what people do".

There's a (short!) paper that I like to reference when it comes to using fancy distributed software: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos15-paper-mcsherry.pdf

“You can have a second computer once you’ve shown you know how to use the first one.”

There's a recent trend of throwing higher-order tools and abstractions at our problems. And I feel like this trend sucks, because (a) most of these tools don't scale to Actually Big problems, and (b) most users barely need a fraction of what the tools CAN do.

It worries me that in the infra space, there's been a shift to sell medium-scale tools as Planet Scale tools, largely to small-scale companies.

To go back to the COST paper, if you don't know how to make a production service work well on some Linux boxes, you're going to have a bad day on Kubernetes. It's Linux boxes but more complicated, _especially_ when something somewhere goes wrong.

Personally, I'm pretty divided on the Platform Platform goal of Kubernetes these days. I like the high level idea of a distributed OS, but...

Maybe "every org builds custom tools on Kubernetes to achieve the same goals" isn't a great pattern,

Is the solution to have a few really robust platformed powered BY k8s? Or... do we need to focus on basics?

Tools like Nomad and Swarm, or even Heroku are appealing because you don't need to DIY (or shell out to extra vendors) for basic functionality.

I wonder how viable a tower of lego is. Personally, the easiest software stack I've run in production was simple and VM-based. And the problems it had _could_ have been smoothed a bit with Kubernetes, but would be far easier solved by fixing the app itself.

Stick to basics until you hit the limits.

IDK, someone come revoke my cloud card now.

For random people stumbling on this: I've used k8s for years, have built a LOT with it, and contribute upstream. I'm indignant but well informed, thanks.

This whole thread has some SwiftOnSecurity energy.