Hacker News Reader

Comment by craigmccaskill | Hacker News Reader

They specifically called that out in the article with an entire section called "just use docker".

On the same vein as omni, the other reasons are "we don't want to learn a new technology, even though it was made exactly for this purpose" and "we don't want to learn how to install docker-registry."

if you have to choose between a kernel and docker, just choose docker. Python can't get their shit together deployment-wise, and docker is the one true route (tm) to python deployment happiness.

forget virtualenv; forget package dependencies on conflicting versions of libxml; forget coworkers that have 3 different conflicting versions of requests scattered through various services, and goddamnit I just want to run a dev build; forget coworkers that scribble droppings all over the filesystem, and assume certain services will never coexist on the same box

just use docker. It's going to go like this:

step 1: docker

step 2: happy

Ha. Wait until you need to run a build of shared Perl codebase against unit tests in all of the dependent codebases... but some of those codebases compile and run C (or C++) programs... and some of those codebases depend on conflicting versions of GCC!

"If we hit the bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards... checkmate!" -- Zap Brannigan

> forget coworkers that scribble droppings all over the filesystem, and assume certain services will never coexist

I think this tends to be less of a problem than the desire to have a build artifact that can be reliably deployed to multiple servers, rather than having the "build" process and "deploy" process hopelessly intertwined with each other.

To be fair, what didn't work for Nylas might well not be an issue for others. There's definitely more than one way to skin a cat, especially in the Python world.

Seriously, their #1 reason for not using Docker amounts to "we couldn't be bothered to update our kernel." This reads to me more of an interesting story about how they chose to solve the problem rather than a serious recommendation of how things should be done.

I don't think that's a fair representation of why they don't want to update kernels and also completely downplays that there were three other points mentioned which all added non trivial overhead to getting stuff done now.

In an ideal world you build a system from the ground up, but rarely is that ever possible and the approach taken to iterate is far more valuable than your requested 'serious' recommendation.

Seriously, your #1 complaint about their reasons not to use Docker amounts to "I couldn't be bothered to read past the first dot point".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com