Thread by @luca_cloud

1/9 DevOps is not platform engineering, and platform engineering is not DevOps

I see a lot of confusion on this topic and so want to break it all down. What actually is #platformengineering?

And why do I think it's going to change everything?

A thread👇

2/9 First, what actually is DevOps?🤔

Simply, DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, & tools that increases an orgs ability to deliver apps & services at high velocity

It’s not some next level dev, or super engineer. It’s a set of practices and tools

3/9 “You build it, you run it”🛠

Anyone who suffered through the “throw it over the wall" to operations model of development knows how big a game changer DevOps was

The idea was revolutionary

4/9 All good ideas come with a catch however

Do Devs really want to suddenly start doing Ops? And how are they going to learn everything they need to know?

Spoiler alert: They don't😐

5/9 for some orgs, DevOps unlocks a higher plane of efficiency - for most though, it falls very short⛅️

Thus we get "shadow ops" of senior devs, where the most costly & talented plp are spending their time basically doing TicketOps for their team

6/9 And so, in comes #platformengineering💻

PE is the discipline of designing and building Internal Developer Platforms to enable self-service capabilities for devs

PEs implement IDPs to provide resources, golden paths & standards that devs can easily & safely vend

7/9 How does this actually work in reality?🔎

Well, the PE team builds an internal developer platform that bridges everyone together

Devs can then work without worrying about Ops, and Ops can watch everything to make sure standards are applied and nothing is going to explode💥

8/9 Why do I think this is better? Well, this system allows PE teams to adopt a product mindset

The PE team treats the IDP like a product where Devs are users

This means that DX is paramount, and their work can focus purely on developing

9/9 And thus we have the magic💫

#DevOps doesn’t cease to exist or….. die👀 But the problem it’s not able to solve does

We have a structure that allows for all the hopes & dreams that DevOps wasn't able to fully achieve

We get better DX with even better velocity🤷‍♂️

Special final tweet: I write about this topic - a LOT.

If y'all want some extra reading, check these out:

infoq.com/articles/platf…

platformengineering.org/blog/what-is-p…