> Exactly. Docker files are worse than war files in pretty much every way.
They focus at far too low level a problem.
> The problem is that testing isn't cheap. This is where microservices and containers and the all this craziness will fall down. Now you've got dozens and dozens of applications all running with their own application servers, JDBC drivers, and their own JDK. This is a combinatoric explosion in your testing surface.
I fail to see how this more difficult from 95% of existing enterprise systems that run various JDK versions, various WebSphere versions, JDBC drivers etc.
The difference with containers is that vendoring your dependencies makes all that explicit. Whether you choose to stay on old versions is a mistake you can still make (and will make if you leave container creation and patching in the hands of dev teams).
That said, since when does any organization build horizontal testing libraries, like, "test X version of JDBC", so they can standardize on a single driver across all projects? It's never done. Projects are all over the place with their dependencies unless there is institutionalized forcing through Maven repos or what not to block the download of old/insecure versions.
There is no combinatorial problem here, each test suite needs to unit test the individual service and then test the API contract of the service. If you let your dependencies decay you're accepting major security and maintenance risk, but you were in the WAR file world too.
> The true value of the application server approach is that it forced applications to conform to a clear contract. Once your application conformed to this contract it could be thrown over the wall into a full-time ops organization that could transparently deploy, monitor and manage the app.
LOL, I really think you're exaggerating. I've worked with WebLogic, WebSphere, IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, Django, Rails, Node, you name it over the years, and while some orgs got close in the Java world, this was mostly a pipe dream that never happened in any cost effective manner as a standard practice.
> The container madness will come to an end. People will realize that giving developers the keys to the kingdom and total freedom over their application is a terrible idea. (And smart developers don't want total freedom.)
This I agree with. It's all far too low level.
This really was Docker, Inc.'s fault IMO, their marketing message was to empower developers to get ops out of the way by building these containers that would magically just be run as opaque lego blocks. That was the hype everyone on HN was drooling over in 2013. Turns out it's not quite that simple.
They focus at far too low level a problem.
> The problem is that testing isn't cheap. This is where microservices and containers and the all this craziness will fall down. Now you've got dozens and dozens of applications all running with their own application servers, JDBC drivers, and their own JDK. This is a combinatoric explosion in your testing surface.
I fail to see how this more difficult from 95% of existing enterprise systems that run various JDK versions, various WebSphere versions, JDBC drivers etc.
The difference with containers is that vendoring your dependencies makes all that explicit. Whether you choose to stay on old versions is a mistake you can still make (and will make if you leave container creation and patching in the hands of dev teams).
That said, since when does any organization build horizontal testing libraries, like, "test X version of JDBC", so they can standardize on a single driver across all projects? It's never done. Projects are all over the place with their dependencies unless there is institutionalized forcing through Maven repos or what not to block the download of old/insecure versions.
There is no combinatorial problem here, each test suite needs to unit test the individual service and then test the API contract of the service. If you let your dependencies decay you're accepting major security and maintenance risk, but you were in the WAR file world too.
> The true value of the application server approach is that it forced applications to conform to a clear contract. Once your application conformed to this contract it could be thrown over the wall into a full-time ops organization that could transparently deploy, monitor and manage the app.
LOL, I really think you're exaggerating. I've worked with WebLogic, WebSphere, IIS, JBoss, Tomcat, Django, Rails, Node, you name it over the years, and while some orgs got close in the Java world, this was mostly a pipe dream that never happened in any cost effective manner as a standard practice.
> The container madness will come to an end. People will realize that giving developers the keys to the kingdom and total freedom over their application is a terrible idea. (And smart developers don't want total freedom.)
This I agree with. It's all far too low level.
This really was Docker, Inc.'s fault IMO, their marketing message was to empower developers to get ops out of the way by building these containers that would magically just be run as opaque lego blocks. That was the hype everyone on HN was drooling over in 2013. Turns out it's not quite that simple.