Yeah, very confusing title. I was wondering if "dotfiles" had a completely different meaning than the obvious one, but his link to it was exactly what I expected.

I guess what he means is not so much the dotfiles themselves, but the customization and sharing of them, and not for computers, but for containers, and not dotfiles, but Docker configuration. But other than that I'm sure it's basically the same thing.

Dotfiles are generally the set of preferences applied. Implicit though is also usually the set of tools installed. Generally I'd say the idea is to make one's environment semi-portable, something you can get, wherever you go.

The idea here is to have, rather than a set of configurations you can deploy wherever you go, a factory that produces ready to go computers on demand.

This post makes a lot of sense to me, & is a good exploration of what our environments are, & how they might be expanded & better able to serve, especially as we get better containerized systems. This approach is web based, and with nice integration work like Toolbx[1] I expect this sort of primed, ready-to-go, containerized development strategy being more popular. Having everything ready, but having it all still be "cattle" not "pets" allows for a lot more unchecked & wild experimentation during development.

[1] https://containertoolbx.org/

They're likely referring to "storing your config data in a repo" as "dotfiles" here. It makes sense in that light: where backing up your config data makes life easier for you when you set up a new machine, this makes it easier whenever you'd like to demo new software by creating a mini-VM. This is just expedited sandboxing with web access built in.

The two feel complementary; you'd likely still want your dotfiles included in the images you're spinning up.

i think what makes it confusing is he links to an article on his own blog every 1 to 2 sentences. really takes away from whatever this actually is, which is apparently something that allows him to code on an iPad. sigh

You're right to be confused but the author is a certified iOS "developer" don't you know...