Simplify DevOps with Go

Look, it’s simple. One of the main jobs of a DevOps¹ engineer is to keep reducing the unnecessary complexity and bringing about clarity. And this is not simple.

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex…

– E.F. Schumacher

To be able to simplify, one needs to become very experienced, very senior. Here’s a pattern I’ve noticed that makes it difficult. I often take on (or I’m given) a task, that’s at least partly new to me. There’s a new tool, framework, platform, or programming language involved. And there’s usually a (self-imposed) deadline. So this approach, without the strikethroughs, seems reasonable:

1. Learn the new stuff well.
2. Build a prototype.
3. Build the real solution.
4. Refactor it.
5. Refactor it again.
6. Deploy.

Now, the problem is that the first step tends to lose the “well” part and steps 3, 4, and 5 are often skipped. Sometimes because there’s no time. Sometimes because I’m lazy. One can mitigate this by asking for more time and by fighting the laziness². But I should like to focus on a third option here: spending less time learning new stuff.

I don’t want to stop learning, that would be a mistake. I just want to avoid learning too much new stuff that’s unrelated or duplicate to what I already know. And that’s why I prefer to invest deeply in concepts and in one good programming language and reuse (and learn more of) them wherever possible.

For me, that language is Go.

And this site is about using Go to simplify DevOps and infrastructure work: writing CLI tools, building systems, and replacing unnecessary complexity with simple, maintainable software.