text stringlengths 0 2.35k |
|---|
• Go is a good language for dealing with large and messy codebases due to its strong static analysis features. |
• Go's simplicity and cultural idioms contribute to making it easier to understand and maintain complex systems. |
• The transform process is the most important part of GitOps, not the specific tools or technologies used. |
• GitOps definition discussed, emphasizing infrastructure as code and using Git to manage objects |
• Transform operations and automation attached to Git pull requests for reproducibility and familiarity |
• Importance of Ops in GitOps emphasized, with Ops arranging transform operations |
• Comparison made between GitOps and traditional DevOps, with GitOps seen as a natural extension |
• Discussion of Twitter reply settings and the creation of echo chambers or psychological safety |
• Final thoughts on unpopular opinions, with Ian Lopshire unable to come up with one |
**Kris Brandow:** Hello, hello, hello! Welcome, everyone out there in the land of Gophers. We're back for another episode, and this is actually the seventh episode in what used to be called the Maintenance Miniseries, and now is just a maintenance series, I suppose... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Or just one big, long rant. |
**Kris Brandow:** Yeah. Just one big, long rant. So if you've tuned into our maintenance series before, you know we've talked about buying versus building, how to build actually maintainable software, how to maintain it ourselves, how to maintain open source software, and legacy code... And even how to reuse some of th... |
So in that spirit of that last one though, where we kind of dove in on a particular topic and got more into the nitty-gritty of it, instead of it being this more expansive thing, we're back to a kind of more confined topic, and that topic today is "What do we do with projects when they get big and messy?" For this topi... |
**Ian Lopshire:** I'm doing great! |
**Kris Brandow:** Awesome. We're also joined by Sam Boyer. How are you today, Sam? |
**sam boyer:** I am just lovely. |
**Kris Brandow:** Amazing. And I have a wonderful co-host with me, and that is Johnny Boursiquot. How are you doing today, Johnny? |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** You know, I always say that I've been better... I'm getting better... Yeah, I'll stick with that. |
**Kris Brandow:** Okay. Yeah, it's always good to be getting better. Alright, and since all of you are now veterans of the podcast, I don't think we need any introductions, so we can just kind of jump right into it, I suppose. |
\[03:51\] So I will caveat this by saying it was just a month and a half or so ago that we did talk about legacy projects... So obviously, we're trying to talk about big, messy codebases that we don't want to throw away. We talked a lot about legacy, and wanting to do greenfield, and wanting to get rid of big, messy co... |
I'll start with saying -- you know, I think the answer from all of you was gonna be yes, but... Do all of you agree that we should be focusing more on those brownfield, and just kind of taking those big, messy projects and advancing them forward? Or is anybody here just in absolute disagreement with that? |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Oh, I love me a brownfield project. Oh, I do, I really do. You know why? Because if it wasn't making money, if it wasn't valuable for the business, it wouldn't be around and I wouldn't be employed to work on it. So I love me a brownfield project. |
But joking aside, brownfield projects are worn in. There are fewer things to figure out, unless it's still actively being -- you know, features are still being added, and development is active. There's no new big pieces to figure out. The patterns have been established, the abstractions, for better or for worse, are th... |
It doesn't sound sexy, or there's nothing appealing about a brownfield, but there are few things, there are fewer gotchas. Or at least the gotchas have been somewhat documented and identified. To me, that's some of the pros of the brownfield projects. |
**Ian Lopshire:** It sounds to me like you had some really great brownfield projects, if all that's documented, and... \[laughter\] That's not my experience. I mean, those gotchas you said are hopefully documented - no. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Not always. |
**Ian Lopshire:** In the ideal world, I agree with you. And even if it's not a good brownfield project that's been documented and well-maintained, it's still keeping the lights on, because it exists and you're working on it, so... Bonus points there. |
**Kris Brandow:** I feel like Sam just had something just ready to... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** He's trying to find a nice way to put it... \[laughter\] |
**Ian Lopshire:** No, actually I'm trying to -- I'm feeling like a little kid and I'm stuck back on the idea of... Johnny, you said you like brownfield projects because they make money, which got me thinking... So the value stream runs through the brownfield; what's in the value stream that's making it brown? But I'm n... |
But after we get out of this sewer, I think it's interesting that -- Johnny, I feel like you must have some projects in mind that you're picturing, that they have the questions answered; some of the mystery pushed out of them, that there sort of aren't these gotchas, because that doesn't seem like something that's nece... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** So don't get me wrong... They tend to still have a pile of technical debt. Just things that people just wish they could fix. And engineers work on these things, and they're always like "Man, if we could only get a month or two to not be building and tacking on additional stuff at a slow rate." Th... |
So the code - I guess that's the nuance that I failed to articulate. The code - usually, it's crap. Let's be honest. |
**sam boyer:** It's that value stream! \[laughter\] |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** \[08:03\] That value stream, you know? It's full of things that makes it brown, you know what I mean? It's not just the sun hitting down on the grass and making it brown... Yeah, there's that stuff in there. But the business at this point hopefully knows what it wants; it's not changing its mind ... |
**Kris Brandow:** I guess I would pose a question as well of -- I know we like to think and talk about greenfield projects and building all of this stuff, but is it actually possible for us... You know, not in like fantasy land, which we all like to think in when we go into a greenfield project, all optimistic about ev... |
**sam boyer:** No, I have a take on this... |
**Ian Lopshire:** Yes! \[laughter\] |
**sam boyer:** No, I think it's really important to identify... Like, we do the greenfield/brownfield distinction in part because - or maybe it's just my flawed perfectionist mind, but I think we are excited about the new project to some extent because it is shiny, and because it has not been sullied by production and ... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** That's not very hopeful, Sam. You're usually a pretty hopeful guy. \[laughs\] |
**sam boyer:** I imagined it kind of hopeful... I don't know. Things have happened. I mean it to be hopeful in the sense that there is the reality of business value actually having set in. We know what this thing is for, we know how we get value out of it... And there is something exciting about that sort of uncertaint... |
**Kris Brandow:** \[11:56\] I kind of wonder if -- what you're saying here is the way that we get to a greenfield is by embracing the fact that it's a brownfield. You know, manure is used to grow things, so maybe you have to embrace that, and we get to the greenfield by actually sewing the revenue stream into the land ... |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Yeah, I was kind of waiting for us to get there... \[laughter\] |
**Kris Brandow:** It is not going to stop. But when you think about it in your mind, I feel like that kind of makes sense, and that's why I did really wanna talk about this topic, too... Because it's like, I think a lot of people go into projects thinking that they're going to start with a greenfield project, they're g... |
**sam boyer:** So we're talking about this like brownfield is old, and greenfield is new. Can we talk about what that transition looks like? What do you do on a project that you did wrong, that makes it now brown? I have some theories about this, but I'd love to hear what you guys think... |
**Kris Brandow:** Time. You wrote more code. \[laughs\] |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** Or you wrote code on a greenfield project. That can make it brown quickly. |
**Ian Lopshire:** You change your mind. |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** You change your mind, yeah. Change, really. In other words, time. |
**Kris Brandow:** I said that half-jokingly, of time, but I think at least to me and the things I've seen, that usually is the big marker. It's like, we just kept doing what we were doing when we started. Because if you think about how you usually start greenfield projects, we all very much don't like the big upfront d... |
**sam boyer:** Hey! Hey! \[laughter\] I've got dinner to put on my table. What are you doing telling people they don't wanna do that?! |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** "You're messing with my bread and butter here." \[laughter\] |
**Kris Brandow:** I mean, they have to... You have to put some monitoring and telemetry and logging and all of that in, or you're gonna have something worse than a brownfield... So you've gotta put something out there, eventually. But we don't jump into a project and immediately start being like, "Okay, well how am I g... |
**Break:** \[14:45\] |
**Johnny Boursiquot:** I have a very painful memory of a project which started out green, quickly became brown; or it started browning, but we were moving so fast that there was "no time" to go back and face it. We just kept rolling. I think we've touched on some of this over previous episodes, but we had a proof of co... |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.