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Instead of writing a build script to put everything together from a solid foundation, Docker implicitly encourages you to perform a succession of random undocumented changes on the original foundation endlessly. Also known as "tribal knowledge." And this is all somehow "cleaner" than build scripts. "Putting aside deployment" means discouraging reproducibility and encouraging book burning.

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No, putting aside deployment means he was talking about the benefits of Docker for local development instead of the benefits of Docker for deployment. As to your talk of a build script, this is what the Dockerfile is for, and it is heavily documented.

Correct, but a Dockerfile is not the only way to create a docker image.

Packer has a docker-builder which constructs docker images without a dockerfile, found it useful for quickly converting between creating AMIs and Docker images for EC2.

can you describe this solid foundation in more detail?

I think depends on the project, no? You first specify your dependencies, then provide a way to use the dependencies to build the end project.

If you don't have to specify the dependencies or the build process to the user, then you can get away with the build process not being well defined. Docker is a win for 'easy installation', but I wonder if it degrades the quality of projects which rely on it?

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