Comment by nixdev | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nixdev | Hacker News Reader

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> Personally - just let the developer own the machine they use for development.

Overall I agree with you that this is how it should be, but as DevOps working with so many development teams, I can tell you that too many developers know a language or two but beyond that barely know how to use a computer. Most developers (yes even most of the ones in Silicon Valley or the larger Bay Area) with Macbooks will smile and nod at when you tell them that Docker Desktop runs a virtual machine to run a copy of Linux to run oci images, and then not too much later reveal themselves to have been clueless.

Commenters on this site are generally expected to be in a different category. Just wanted to share that, as a seasoned DevOps pro, I can tell you it's pretty rough out there.

This is an unpopular take, but entirely true. Skilled at a programming language, other than maybe C, does not in any way translate to general skill with system administration, or even knowing how to correctly operate a computer. I once had to explain to a dev that their Mac was out of disk space because a. They had never removed dangling containers or old image versions b. They had never emptied the Trash.

Unpopular take? I thought it was common knowledge that computer operation and computer programming involve distinct (if overlapping) skillsets.

It's unpopular because developers want to have root access to their machines whilst being proudly ignorant to how fast the sensitive medical data or financial data they're working on can fly out of the machine.

Even when provided a means to instantiate virtual machines where they can have root access within the virtual machine, a lot of them will bitch.

> Even when provided a means to instantiate virtual machines where they can have root access within the virtual machine, a lot of them will bitch.

Well, yeah. I spent a year or so doing all my work in a VM (for other reasons) and it sucked.

> proudly ignorant to how fast the sensitive medical data or financial data they're working on can fly out of the machine

Hey, this is an easy choice! If I can have local root XOR sensitive production data on my machine, I pick local root. Keep that PII the fuck away from my disk, please!! (Hell, do that whether I have root or not.)

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