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Comment by tacker2000 | Hacker News Reader

tacker2000

The author suggests that Docker doesnt help development and that devs just spin up databases, but I have to disagree with that and Im pretty sure i am not the only one.

All my projects (primarily web apps) are using docker compose which configures multiple containers (php/python/node runtime, nginx server, database, scheduler, etc) and run as a dev environment on my machine. The source code is mounted as a volume. This same compose file is then also used for the deployment to the production server (with minor changes that remove debug settings for example).

This approach has worked well for me as a solo dev creating web apps for my clients.

It has also enabled extreme flexibility in the stacks that I use, I can switch dev environments easily and quickly.

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I agree with you 100%, though arguably what you could be describing is how docker changed your deployment workflow, not your development workflow (although with devcontainers that line is blurry, as you say).

I guess it's worth keeping in mind that Justin only quit Docker a few months ago, and his long tenure as CTO there will have (obviously) informed the majority of the opinions in the article. I think the deployment over development spin and some of the other takes there more closely reflect the conversations he had with large corp paying customers at the exec level than the workflows of solo devs that switch dev environments much more frequently than most etc.

It goes hand in hand, it changed both the dev and he deploy workflow.

Before Docker I was using Xampp and FTP’ing source code to the prod server.

Alternatives to FTP'ing, as deploying from a source code repository and tools like capistrano, heroku, chef deploy resource, puppet vcsrepo existed long before Docker.

Not in the hearts and minds of most individual SMB hackers, though (except Heroku to some degree in some circles). Most of the rest were only for Enterprisey teams. Many, many folks graduated straight from FTPing PHP to the customer's shared host to running docker compose on the customer's VPS or cloud instance. The least-common-denominator clients that hire these folks graduated from shared hosting (where PHP/MySQL was the only viable option, really) to cloud instances (where suddenly all the other languages and backing services were viable). The GoDaddy->AWS LightSail "our website budget is 5 dollars" pipeline.

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