[snupples]

The "it's too complex" argument usually reflects more on the commenter than on kubernetes itself. It's actually one of the most very straight forward and thoughtfully designed platforms I've ever worked with.

What I've found in my experience is that applications in general are complex -- more complex than people assume -- but the imperative style of provisioning seems to hide it away, and not in a good way. The inherent complexity hides behind layers of iterative, mutating actions where any one step seems "simple", but the whole increasingly gets lost in the entropic background, and in the end the system gets more and more difficult to _actually_ understand and reproduce.

Tools like ansible and terraform and kubernetes have been attempts to get towards more definition, better consistency, _away_ from the imperative. Even though an individual step under the hood may be imperative, the goal is always toward eventual consistency, which, really only kubernetes truly achieves. By contrast, MRSK feels to be subtly turning that arrow around in the wrong direction.

I'm sure it was fun to build, but one could have spent 1% of that time getting to understand the "complexity" of kubernetes - by the way, which quickly disappears once it's understood. Understandably, though, that would feel like a defeat to someone who truly enjoys building new systems from scratch (and we need those people).

[erulabs]

You've hit the nail on the head. Ten thousand simple, bespoke, hand-crafted tools have the same complexity as one tool with ten thousand facets. The real velocity gained is that this one tool with ten thousand facets is mass produced, and in use widely, with a large set of diverse users.

I don't know a single person who's been responsible for infra-as-code in chef/terriform/ansible who isn't more or less in love with Kubernetes (once they get over the learning curve). Everyone who says "it's too complex" bears a striking resemblance to those developers who happily throw code over the wall into production, where it's someone else's issue.

> Understandably, though, that would feel like a defeat to someone who truly enjoys building new systems from scratch (and we need those people).

Exactly. Building new systems from scratch is tons of fun! It's just not necessarily the right business move, unless the goal was to get the front-page of HN, that is.

[leetrout]

I'll take this bait:

Nomad is better for smaller teams and smaller companies with smaller problems than what k8s is for.

Helm is an abomination on top of it but that seems to be slowing down, thankfully.