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Comment by nattaylor | Hacker News Reader

Maybe it's more important to ask 'why' [do I need this infra]?

Complexity shouldn't be the default but it can be the right answer

As a "devops" engineer, I can say with total confidence that complexity is rarely the right answer. When it is, it's because that complexity is the lowest pain point in a calculation that has itself become complex.

Sometimes you can add complexity to the whole stack by adding a new shiny layer that brings down complexity where you care most about it, in your user-facing UI/UX layer.

Developers can handle complexity via code much more efficiently than users operating a site or app...

Also, some of the nice developments of the recent explosion of serverless/as a service stuff, is that you can mostly try stuff for free, be happy on the free tier if you don't need scale, and use that scale when you need it without much hassle but paying the overprice of their fat margins.

Also you should probably have an ejection plan in case scale + external provider becomes too expensive, you should always have a nice idea on how to run your stack if you need it...

Complexity is never the right answer. Complexity, in my experience, comes from two things: The person building that system doesn't understand the problem well enough and/or equates complexity with quality. Neither are good things.

that's because there are 2 kinds of complexity: essential (or intrinsic) complexity and accidental complexity.

When one uses k8s when one doesn't truly need it, it's accidental complexity. However some problems require k8s, where the engineered complexity of k8s helps solving the problem at hand.

Of course the issue is that most people don't need k8s, whereas Google and the like do.

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