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back to article Puppet shows its hand: All your software is belong to us

In an episode of Seinfeld from 1996, George is shocked when he discovers his former boss, Mr Wilhelm, has joined a cult, the Sunshine Carpet Cleaners. “Most of the world is carpeted,” Wilhelm intones, vacuum in hand. “And one day, we will do the cleaning.” In sunny San Diego, California, on Thursday, executives from Puppet, …

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  1. SVV

    In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

    What do you mean by "in the future"?

    Whilst I like Puppet and find it useful, I fear trhe author of this article is suffering from "over exposure to hype syndrome" at the PuppetWorld conference they're attending.

    Having spent 20 years writing and deploying software, often in complex environments involving lots of servers, use of tools such as Maven, or even plain old shell scripts for automated deployment has been a common practice thoughout, and I suspect for much longer.

    Of course not everybody is so smart : one place I contracted at had 2 seperate and incompatible source code management tools, and an utterly crazy build and deployment procedure. Basically, deployments took a whole weekend, and most of the time didn't work so had to be rolled back which sometimes was also unsuccessful for a day or two. And the management thought that the two "senior developers" who had implemented thiis farcical process were such experts on account of ten years working at the company that they wouldn't listen to any modern ideas, despite the obvious cost this situation was causing.

    14 0 Reply
    1. Charles 9
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

      Pardon me, but if their goal is to develop code that manages code, then who develops the code that manages their code that manages the original code, and so on down? And if you develop code that can manage itself (which I don't think you can because of limitations of scope), then you can collapse the whole system back down to the original system and simply let it manage itself with none of the middlemen.

      3 0 Reply
      1. Ragarath
        Reply Icon

        Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

        They call that AI I think :)

        1 0 Reply
        1. Charles 9
          Reply Icon

          Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

          And as I recall, true AI, as in software that can manage and improve itself unprompted, is one of those "it's always 20 years in the future" things.

          3 0 Reply
      2. Paul Hovnanian Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

        It's Puppets all the way down.

        3 0 Reply
        1. Justicesays
          Reply Icon
          Devil

          Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

          It''s simple,

          They provide code that allows you to write code to manage code.

          You still have to write that code yourself, but if everyone used puppet you might be able to steal most of your code from "puppetmonks" (without really understanding it), then brick your entire data-centre during some edge case deployment.

          Even Google have managed to do that, so it wont be hard for other people.

          3 1 Reply
    2. I am the liquor
      Reply Icon

      What do you mean by "in the future"?

      Well yes, quite. It's a long time since manually copying individual .exe files off floppy disks was the standard means of software installation. Software deploying software is hardly a new idea. The reference in the article to Mr Wilhem is very apt.

      5 0 Reply
      1. RegGuy1 Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        .exe file

        What's an exe file?

        4 3 Reply
    3. TheVogon
      Reply Icon

      Re: In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code

      "In the future code is going to be managed and deployed by other code"

      Translation - you have to learn a coding language (Ruby) to use this steaming pile....

      1 2 Reply
  2. jake Silver badge

    Three words:

    Digital Snake Oil.

    5 1 Reply
    1. ecofeco Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: Three words:

      This product gas been getting some good reviews (I said some) and has been around for a few years now, but that sales pitch is utter bollocks.

      3 0 Reply
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Three words:

        Ecofeco: "that sales pitch is utter bollocks."

        The article: "Mirchandani, a veteran of VMware, ECM [1], and Microsoft,"

        Hmmm. Pure coincidence, obviously. Might be good for the share price though.

        [1] I presume it meant EMC:

        https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjay-mirchandani-08470762

        0 0 Reply
  3. Novex

    Seems...

    ...like we're in advertorial land again.

    6 0 Reply
    1. Vic
      Reply Icon

      Re: Seems...

      we're in advertorial land again.

      I suspect it's more "epiphany".

      An advertorial touting puppet being used to deploy software is like an advertorial on cars being used to travel between two places...

      Vic.

      0 1 Reply
  4. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Meh

    Is anyone thinking...

    "Gosh, that reminds me of Tivoli (acquired by IBM) and CA Unicienter"

    But presumably a bit cheaper and simpler to deploy.

    A filing cabinet full of old PR bumpf can be a remarkably useful tool in the IT game.

    5 0 Reply
  5. Alistair
    Coat

    Whilst I'll agree the article itself is the result of one too many days at a conference, and one or two too many nights hanging about the PR suite's bar, puppet is indeed a marvellous tool. And, yes, it CAN make your life as an SA MUCH easier - mostly used for build process here, installing standard toolkit components and ensuring that security standards are hit. It has been mangled to do software installs as well - mostly with additional scripting.

    cfengine, puppet,chef,Tivoli,etc etc etc -> all tools I've used and found both positive and negative elements to all.

    Hopefully I'll get my hands on some updated puppet docs soon.

    5 1 Reply
  6. ecofeco Silver badge

    Wha... what?

    “At some point, all software is going to be installed, configured, monitored, and managed by other software,”

    Isn't this done already? Been done for years? Seriously, WTF is he talking about?

    I'm pretty good at buzzword bingo, but statements that sound like something that has been done for years have never been done, hurt my head.

    5 0 Reply
  7. Frank N. Stein
    Devil

    More of this AI nonsense?

    There is no AI to replace System Administrators who lack the skills to do their jobs and try to hide that lack of skill with hardware replacements for parts that never failed. That leaves software config. Humans with skills should be handling that.

    1 1 Reply
  8. Herby
    Joke

    It's .....

    Turtles all the way down!

    4 0 Reply
  9. Disk0
    Coat

    I read that as Muppet

    Mine's the one with the dummy in the side pocket...

    3 0 Reply
    1. Adrian 4
      Reply Icon

      Re: I read that as Muppet

      That would be right. In my experience, most software is installed by muppets.

      3 0 Reply

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