You know, I think it’s time we let infrastructure engineers into the Agile development process.

Dare to Code

As it happens, I was on a panel discussing Devops a month or so back. The emphasis was primarily about how infrastructure engineers need to learn how to code.

In fact, the swag being given out was scarves (it was January, and it was cold). The scarves bore a legend, in big letters: Dare to Code.

Now, I agree that coding is good. I do it pretty much all the time.

But three things occur to me:

The first, is that the internet wasn’t invented by coders.

The second, is that infrastructure has four key features built in. These are reliability, scalability, resilience and manageability.

The third, is that coding is a time-consuming, unreliable and manual process done by workers skilled in their craft - and proud of it. This is charming and delightful. But quite medieval.

Can Coding Scale?

Now, I don’t underestimate medieval skill and creativity. Just look at, say, Chartres Cathedral or the Bayeux Tapestry. But it makes you wonder how scalable the act of coding really is.

So I reckon infrastructure people are actually ahead of us. They don’t code, they configure. They let automation take the strain.

If we can find the abstraction and environment that brings infrastructure engineers into the world of Agile & Devops, we would build better on the lessons learned by them over the years.

After all, their work - the reliable, scalable internet - is now so embedded in our lives as to be regarded, by some, as a human right.

Photo courtesy of atlassian.com