DOP 240: Supercharging Developer Workflows with Simplified Platform Engineering
Dec 6, 2023
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The podcast discusses the concept of platform engineering, the challenges in providing services, and simplifying developer workflows. It also explores the role of Dapper at Diagrid and the challenges of working with Kubernetes.
Simplified platform engineering can enhance developer workflows and automate tasks to make processes more efficient.
It is essential to gather user feedback and understand the specific requirements of each role to build a platform that truly meets their needs.
Deep dives
Platform engineering aims to scale knowledge and automate workflows
Platform engineering is all about enabling experts to scale their knowledge and automate workflows. It involves understanding the workflows of developers, security personnel, and operations teams and working with them to automate tasks. Simplified platform engineering can supercharge developer workflows and make processes more efficient.
Creating a useful platform requires understanding different user needs
A useful platform should be transparent and allow users to perform their usual tasks, while also taking care of more complex tasks like pushing code to production or creating environments. However, it is important to recognize that different teams within an organization have different needs. Developers, security personnel, and operations teams all require different functionalities from a platform. It is essential to gather user feedback and understand the specific requirements of each role to build a platform that truly meets their needs.
Striking a balance between simplicity and flexibility
When building a platform for developers, it is important to provide a level of flexibility that allows users to tap and get what they need, while also offering deeper levels of abstraction for those who require more control. Balancing simplicity and flexibility ensures that developers can perform their tasks easily while still having the capability to understand and modify functionality when necessary.
The importance of visibility and observability in platform engineering
Visibility and observability are crucial aspects of platform engineering. Providing developers with clear and comprehensive information about the status and performance of their applications can greatly enhance productivity. It is necessary to establish a consistent experience between local development environments and remote production environments, ensuring that developers can easily observe and debug their applications no matter where they are running.
#240: Imagine being handed a nicely-wrapped box containing Platform Engineering, much like when we were sold DevOps in a Box. An enigmatic gift, with potential benefits yet accompanied by potential complexities. It calls to question - how is this different from the countless developer platforms we've seen companies launch over the years?
In this episode, we speak with Mauricio Salatino about his take on where platform engineering is today and where it's headed in the future.