Category Archives: Rants

Rant: Why DevOps is not an answer? Because there was no question

Why do I think that DevOps is not going to last too long as it is now widely marketed and hyped? Because there was really not that much demand for it in the first place – it was hyped and brought up by project management and some marketing people that always know better how programming and software development should be done.
I’ve seen some IT hypes rise and go

  • XML is the answer for all your data representation needs (not)
  • Javascript/Ruby/C# is the only programming language you need to know (Python is thriving, C and C++ are alive and kicking)
  • Unix is obsolete – Windows NT can cover all your server demands (yes I am that old)

As the experience shows in 2-3-4-5 years hype dies out and most of things return back to the way they were before, may be with the slight new twist. Of course there is always some market share leftovers staying on so much hyped technologies just because big investments were made into it and these could not be unmade without some unpleasant discussions so at the end it was just decided to call this innovations a success.
What I think, that the whole DevOps deal was an attempt of some management to cut costs ™ namely make software developers do sysadmin tasks without hiring professional sysadmins and basically without salary rise. Round of applause ensued, big bonuses distributed and reports of innovations issued. Nice and shiny face of the capitalism here. New tools and technologies came out shortly after and placing DevOps into the title and somewhere on the resume will ensure recruiters interest in you.
Why do I think this is totally wrong? From my more then 20 years experience I could say that software developers and system administrators have not only different skill set but also very different mindset and way of solving problems. You know what they say – “If you are a hammer most of the problems start looking like a nail”? Software developers/programmers are set to solve a problem with writing new code or modifying an existing code. All side problems like configuring development environment, setting up networking, backups and information security are seen as an obstacles to the final and ultimate goal – software development. So you would naturally assume that performing “Op” tasks will be quick, inaccurate and well yeah mediocre in order to achieve an ability to do “Dev” part (19% of Docker images with empty root password is the nice illustration to issue). You want an example? Here you go – saving AWS credentials in github repository is widely known security problem nowdays, and guess what – in most cases that was done by some CI/CD tool or some high and mighty DevOp that was harmless and respected programmer in his previous life.
I wouldn’t say that DevOps is total pure evil in itself – there are some good ideas in it, but dumping all system administration tasks on developers usually wouldn’t lead to any good outcome. Just like widely popular tape recorders with bundled radio long time ago – both functions were way below average.
I hope that at the end the common sense will prevail.

Windows: What do I want to see as default browser

Why Did I bother with it at all?

As I wrote before it is more convenient and secure to have something small, fast and feature limited as your default browser (valid decision for all OSes out there).
Well times go by and nice small Qtweb got outdated with development on it stopped about 6 years ago and new standards (namely SSL/TLS) and new vulnerabilities came out, so I decided
Read more »

I have to say it: Debian package management beats it all

Yes, I need to get it out of my system, once and for all.
With all due respect to the selfless efforts of all Debian developers I have to admit that in the course of my professional career I’ve never dealt with such an confusing, obscure and downright inconvenient package management tools. You guys even left Sun far behind.
And I’ve see it all.
Here, I’ve said it, now you can hate me because you can’t allow yourselves to admit that I’m right.

Rant: Why I would never have facebook account

no-fb First of all – this is my opinion, it’s emotional, biased, personal and has nothing to do with you. If you are offended by my opinion – you are not required to read, agree with it or argue with me.
Read more »

Sysadmin: Why CentOS?

centos_icon Why CentOS as our main server farm Linux distribution? I really want this article to be pure technical, but there are some emotions attached to the question so please forgive me if I might break into rant somewhere down the road.

There were so many times when I was asked by young men with bright eyes and too much free time on their hands “Why do you use Centos for your server farm? Why not (debian,ubuntu, gentoo, insert your favorite distribution here)?” And I am so tired of explaining this decision over and over so I decided to put it together in this article and get it over with once and for all.
Read more »

Rant: Keep your critical data local

I think it’s about time I’ll add some personal rant to this blog to add some personal touch to it. Just few words about critical data storage at modern times.

I had a customer server disk failure the other day. Nothing extraordinary about that – old server circa 2006 or 2008 happily humming on old IDE western digital’s 160Gb softraid mirror.
Read more »