> For example, in my entire carrer in this industry, I can honestly say without any exaggeration that I have never met a single person who was obsessed about proving P != NP.
Fair point - an example related to inventing new datastructures would probably have been slightly more realistic ;-)
I certainly agree with your point about "the challenge of the collective user" from a PM perspective. I've worked on quite a few teams where this "collective user" was more of a product of the marketing or PM team's imagination than actually representative of real users, though - and even if you cannot please all users all of the time, in my experience the more of those users are real, the more motivated you are to try to please as many of them as you can.
Overall, very glad to hear there are lots of parts of the industry that are doing a lot better than I have experienced!
> So I just see nothing to imply that CoreOS is a good exponent for some idea of "simple, lightweight enterprise platform".
I'd say that's completely valid. I was not trying to imply that the combination of CoreOS and tools such as Fleet, Flannel, Kubernetes etc. claimed to be a "simple, lightweight platform". Indeed, as you point out, the core component, i.e. Rocket itself, may well be more complex than "Docker classic."
I think your comments demonstrate accurately that the overall "Rocket ecosystem" will also address the inevitable enterprise requirements. Since most of the other tools you mention did not appear in the launch announcement, I think it's fair to say that describing Rocket as a response to the emerging 'non-simple Docker Platform' is, at the very least, inviting a comparison that isn't exactly apples to apples.
The overall point I was trying to make goes beyond Rocket, Docker, containers or any specific current technology or tool, however. The way the Rocket announcement was worded simply prompted on ongoing train of thought. Indeed, it's the many conversations in the past months around Docker that I've been involved in that have exemplified the belief/hope/wish that there finally is a new tool that will make boring enterprise problems magically "go away."
Docker, Rocket, and whatever tomorrow's favorite container framework turns out to be, are unlikely to be the last examples of that pipe dream, I think.
Definitely. And I think if we can move more to discussions along the lines of "how do we best abstract/encapsulate/handle the inevitable complexity," rather than "wow, this technology looks like it will solve all our problems," that would be great.
I know the latter sounds absurdly simplistic, but I still hear an awful lot of it around.
> The Docker simplicity is why they've had so much success. That's how it started: as a tool to make using LXC simpler.
Do you feel Machine, Swarm and Compose add to or detract from the value proposition of Docker, in that case?
Just to ensure I'm understanding your point about Rocket benefiting from 40 years of Unix evolution correctly: do you think that Rocket will be able to remain simple as a result of this? And that Docker perhaps will not, even though up until this point it's been "trying to do things the simple way?"
> I wouldn't be surprised if even Rocket becomes bloated as they realize they cannot design for simplicity when complexity is a requirement.
That was pretty much what I was trying to get at with the question of how a "Rocket ecosystem" would address these requirements. I think vidarh makes a valid point that these could be met by tools outside the container system that are better suited...but I am curious as to what this combination of tools would be.
> I didn't see anything in the Rocket proposal that implied they thought the things Docker wants to add aren't needed
I was referring mainly to this statement: "We should stop talking about Docker containers, and start talking about the Docker Platform. It is not becoming the simple composable building block we had envisioned."
I agree with you that that doesn't necessarily mean that the Rocket team disputes the need for enterprise features, but (as you say) may think other technologies are better suited. The announcement itself doesn't go into much detail as to which technologies those would be, though.
> Who is propagating this myth of the "Simple, Lightweight Enterprise Platform" to begin with?
It certainly hasn't been associated with this specific phrase, but the idea that there is a New Cool Tech around the corner that will be simpler, easier and less heavyweight than the Last Cool Tech seems to be a recurring theme in our industry, in my experience.
That's not to say that new technologies don't introduce dramatic improvements in certain areas. Personally, I'm a big fan of microservices and, specifically, containers as a possible implementation mechanism.
Equally, I don't think it's surprising that technologies such as Docker that start out as 'simple, composable building blocks' become part of more complex, "heavyweight" solutions as they evolve.
Fair point - an example related to inventing new datastructures would probably have been slightly more realistic ;-)
I certainly agree with your point about "the challenge of the collective user" from a PM perspective. I've worked on quite a few teams where this "collective user" was more of a product of the marketing or PM team's imagination than actually representative of real users, though - and even if you cannot please all users all of the time, in my experience the more of those users are real, the more motivated you are to try to please as many of them as you can.
Overall, very glad to hear there are lots of parts of the industry that are doing a lot better than I have experienced!
Regards
ap