bryanwb

This tool is similar to the excellent awsenv https://github.com/michaelcontento/awsenv, but different in that it can be used for multiple applications. It is also different in that it is primarily written in a fully-featured programming language rather than Bash.

I am not really sure. I come from a Ruby and Python background and just love scala. It's a joy to work in and relatively easy to introduce at work compared to other FP languages.

because you can be productive in go in a couple weeks, whereas you will have spend a couple months w/ java/scala/erlang before you are productive.

The biggest reason is that a solid engineeering team, local or remote, needs to work directly for you and not be a subcontractor. Setting up a remote office and hiring staff is a very, very time-consuming and risky process.

doesn't this article fly in the face of an hn-posted article last week that asserted the suburbs are a Ponzi scheme? One could reason that that these inland cities are growing because they are still in the early stages of the Ponzi scheme.

I live in Europe and I feel pretty confident that American cities will become more like Paris, Rome, London and not less. That means the poor live on the periphery and the middle and upper class live close to the center.

elixir doesn't have a mature framework like Rails, but I could easily see using Elixir for things that I would use sinatra for.

Key Advantages: * better performance * easier to write services that stay up thanks to OTP * better memory management

The common strength that elixir shares w/ Ruby is that is also very expressive

I couldn't be more excited about elixir, personally. All the power of erlang plus metaprogramming. To me elixir is the spiritual heir to Ruby

would you be interested to talk about these tools on the http://foodfightshow.org devops podcast? we would love to discuss them with you!

here is my view on the topic http://devopsanywhere.blogspot.it/2011/10/puppet-vs-chef-fig...

I have used both extensively. I found Puppet much easier to get started with but the custom Puppet DSL becomes very quickly constraining. I know that a new pure Ruby DSL is in the works. I found that Chef has a steeper learning curve but many times greater productivity. I do feel that their is much better tooling support for Chef than Puppet, in large part because Chef's pure Ruby approach is much friendlier to Ruby developers. It remains to be seen whether Puppet's coming Ruby DSL will have the same level of functionality.

If you are managing a small application, Chef may feel heavyweight. However, imho, if you can't manage Service-Oriented Architecture w/out a serious configuration management system, be it Chef or Puppet. There are just too many moving parts.

I really started programming at 30. Prior to that I spend 5 years managing medium-sized groups of IT staff (telephone, wan/lan,satellite). Managing the IT groups was a billion times more stressful. Programming is so much more fun and rewarding.

nathenharvey is doing an awesome job w/ his on-the-spot conference interviews. I really enjoyed listening to these.

disclaimer: i founded the foodfightshow podcast and co-host the regular bi-weekly episodes with him

i can see the value of a build/automation tool written in js but man the resulting code is pretty ugly compared to a typical Rakefile

I have used both and find that wile Puppet is a good tool, Chef has a clear lead in functionality and in community strength. Also, the Puppet DSL is a pain as u have to learn both it and ruby.

I wrote up my thoughts in detail here http://devopsanywhere.blogspot.it/2011/10/puppet-vs-chef-fig...

I have been able to automate that whole process but it is hard for me to give specific feedback w/out knowing more about your infrastructure. Come find me or other helpful Cheffolk on #chef at irc.freenode.net or the mailing list lists.opscode.com

Also, you may want to check out FoodFight, the bi-weekly Chef Community podcast http://foodfightshow.org

besides the bootstrap problem, I don't see how chef doesn't solve the issues they had w/ puppet.

Perhaps there were things that disqualified chef in their eyes?

except that you have to invest a lot in a tool and switching has significant costs.

I wrote about that it the previous post, see her http://devopsanywhere.blogspot.com/2011/10/puppet-vs-chef-fi...

awesome comments, apinstein

btw, I am copying your method of managing dotfiles with a Rakefile as we speak.

I counter that while it takes a while to learn chef, it also takes many times more effort to maintain a custom set of shell scripts over the long term

I have written tons of fabfiles and Fabric is a great project. However it isn't intended to managed system state. It is great for code deployment but not suited to configuration management.

I have had a very different experience from yours. I have found the Chef wiki to be consistently well written and consistent. Please note that I have only been working with Chef for the past three weeks, so they may have been brought into that state quite recently.

fixed, tks

The unstated premise of this article is that all sysadmins will very soon be using puppet or chef, thus programming in some subset or DSL that looks a lot like ruby (puppet).

However, that's a separate article that I need to get around to writing.

you also seem to have missed the multiple times I state my personal preference for Python but am shifting to ruby for practical reasons.

see my summary at the end. The real cause of ruby's rise is that puppet was written in it and that you use ruby-based dsl to configure puppet. This factor is more significant than language differences.

I don't understand why they are working on OpenShift/Aeolus Project rather than joining Openstack

Universities are more expensive because they have become educational country clubs/babysitting facilities, complete w/ professional sports teams, grandiose athletic facilities (often for those professional athletes), and n number of caretakers to plan students lives and cater to every one of their developmental needs.

but what is the status of rubinius? is it nearly as far along as pypy?

I would think that the metaprogramming features of ruby which make it so much fun would also make it n times harder to build a JIT for.

HP's twists and turns over the last 10+ years really reflects management-by-mbas

i am quite curious why they chose to build their own rather than use an existing one like schooltool http://schooltool.org/