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#StateOfAutomation - Simple Solutions for Complex Problems

Susan Ma
3 min read
#StateOfAutomation - Simple Solutions for Complex Problems
This article was written over 18 months ago and may contain information that is out of date. Some content may still be relevant, but please refer to official documentation for the latest information.

🤔  What in the world is Automation?

😱  How can we utilize automation to improve our developer experience and productivity?

🤯  Is it possible to over-engineer automation?

If you or your team have ever asked these questions, come dive into some of the talking points discussed at Modern Web's State of Automation event.

In this article, I will review some of the major points brought up during this conversation, hosted by Tracy Lee (@ladyleet) and Matthew Pagan (@mastapegs) of This Dot Labs.

Let's meet our panelists, and hear about what their teams have been working on!

alt text

👩‍💻  Alison Dowdney (@alisondowdney)

Developer Advocate from Weaveworks

  • Weaveworks dropped an early release of Weave Gitops Core, a tool that’s backed by Flux, an open-source tool backed by CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation).

🧑‍💻  Taylor Dolezal (@onlydole)

Senior Developer Advocate from HashiCorp

  • Terraform, an open-source code software tool that enables you to safely create, change, and improve infrastructure, just hit 1.0 earlier this month!
  • Waypoint went to 0.4, which includes mutable deployments and makes it easier to work with Kubernetes.

🧑‍💻  Zan Markan (@zmarkan)

Developer Advocate from CircleCI

  • CircleCI has acquired Vamp, a release orchestration tool.
  • They’ve also released new features like enhanced ARM support, as well as Dynamic Config, which allows users to use jobs and workflows to not only execute the work, but determine the work they want to run.

👩‍💻  Tracy Miranda (@tracymiranda)

Executive Director from Continuous Delivery Foundation

  • Continuous Delivery Foundation hosted cdCon, which supports the tech community by helping organizations focused on tackling the diversity and inclusion gap.

🔑  Key Takeaway Points

  • As we work through the pandemic, and see all the workplace and cultural changes happening, we see that people are really prioritizing automation to help with distributed work and burnout. 🔥
  • Concepts and platforms such as GitOps and Kubernetes Projects have helped us expand automation outside of the coding realm for tasks such as simplifying the interaction between communities.
  • Automation helps with the technical aspect of our workflows, but it might not necessarily solve human or process problems in an organization.
  • It is possible to over-engineer automation! Maintainability is so important to keep in mind to make sure we've created a sustainable workflow for our future teams.
  • And no, Jenkins is not dead. Far from it. 😉

🧠  Resource Recommendations

🙋‍♀️  Have any questions or points to share? Use #StateOfAutomation on Twitter and talk with us!

📺  View the replay here for fun stories, great tips, and faces to names! 🤝

About the author

Susan Ma

Susan Ma

Software Engineer

@sukisupremo

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