Now, imagine that it's a nice morning in the 90s. Dave, our programmer, arrives at work, his hair a mirror of the grunge era's influence, and he is prepared for another day of coding on his desktop which is a little too bulky. The computer is starting up, slowly like a turtle, and Dave is rushing to the break room to get a coffee from the machine—no artisanal espresso, just drip coffee.
Finally, when the computer has booted up, Dave goes ahead to insert a floppy disk into the computer to load his development environment. There is no neat IDE with integrated version control or syntax coloring either. It is just Dave, his text editor, and lines of code, on a stark, phosphor-green screen.
Dave does not see version control as a technical or scientific task, but rather an art. He meticulously labels his floppy disks with a permanent marker: "Project XYZ - v1", "Project XYZ - v1.1 (Stable)", and others. A disk being misplaced is the same as losing several weeks of work, so Dave treats his disk box like the treasure chest.
Compiling code is a good chance for Dave to take a short break. That's when he gets closer with his co-workers by sharing their opinions about the "X-Files" or arguing about Windows 95. They are telling each other their war stories of code gone wrong and the "blue screen of death" that is always with them in their nightmares.
Debugging tools are rudimentary. Dave uses print statements almost exclusively to trace his program’s execution. It's a laborious task as if looking for a needle in a haystack, especially when the bug turns out to be a misplaced semicolon.
After lunch, Dave continues his floppy shuffle, putting and removing the disks as he goes through the different stages of the project. He's very cautious and saves his files often for he's been through the horror of power surges erasing huge blocks of code.
Internet access is limited, so Dave sometimes dials into a Bulletin Board System (BBS) to exchange messages with other developers and download the newest shareware. It is a small window to a larger world, a preview of online communities that will be familiar to the developers of the future.
Dave has a milestone in his calendar, and it is a day of deployment in the 90s. It's like preparing for a space shuttle launch: the whole thing rests on the shoulders of Dave and his trusted crew, yet there's no mission control, just he and his crew.
The Pre-Launch Rituals
The day of mission commencement starts with a ritual which resembles a pre-flight check. The team of Dave and other members meet in the 'war room'—a cluttered office with whiteboards full of diagrams and lists. They go through the deployment plan, a document that had been rewritten more times than anyone wanted to count, ensuring everyone understands what their role is in this day's mission that is crucial.
The Sacred Deployment Manual
Dave feels the manual in his hand, a binder so old and tattered that it can almost be said to have its own gravitational pull. This sacred tome contains the accumulated wisdom of previous deployments: a mix of technical instructions, old stories of mishaps, and superstitions (like the lucky rubber duck that must always sit on the top of the server during deployment).
Dave and his team do not have any automated deployment pipelines, so they have to transport the new software version to the server room on a stack of floppy disks. It's a sobering march, each step with the seriousness of a moon landing, as they transport the precious cargo which has been the culmination of coding and testing.
In the server room, the air is heavy with the tension and the noise of machines. Each team member is in sync, putting floppy disks one by one into the computer, command after command being executed with the precision of good surgeons. Every single key typed is double-checked, every screen prompts are closely looked into. We don't have the luxury of pressing the "undo" button here; we merely pray that every line in the deployment script is written correctly.
The Moment of Truth
Then, after the last disk has been inserted and the last command has been entered, there is a strange feeling of silence. Dave takes the lead and the programmers are all on tenterhooks, waiting for the monitor to come alive with the signs of success or the fatal error messages that will spell certain doom.
If everything goes the way, the cheers emit, and the team also share the moment of triumph, dwelling in the afterglow of their monitors. However, if the experiment goes wrong, it's a rush to diagnose the problem under the fluorescent lights, going through logs, and consulting the deployment manual to find a solution. Whether it's a success story or a cautionary tale, these narratives will be added to the lore of the manual, to guide or to warn future teams.
The Post-Deployment Tradition
At the end of the day, whether in celebration or weary resignation, Dave and his team partake in their post-deployment tradition: diving into the daily grind and having a hearty meal at the local diner, where they both analyze every aspect of the day over greasy comfort food. It's a time when the soldiers can relax, socialize, and prepare mentally for the next deployment day when they'll do the same all over again.
Now, we'll bring Dave to the present, where the development world has changed at a rapid pace. The picture is almost unreal with cloud computing, real-time collaboration, and all the tools in a developer's hand.
For the first time, Dave would be astonished as he witnessed the CI/CD pipeline in motion. The process of coding is automated, and what used to take days now takes minutes. "You're saying that the software tests itself and deploys automatically?" he asks, his eyes wide with amazement.
These days we don't have to have physical servers in the office. Dave becomes aware of cloud computing and scaling the services is no longer a problem of purchasing additional hardware, but rather just a few clicks. For this guy, the sight of an application scaling up during hours of peak usage without manual intervention might as well be magic.
Dave has been working with monolithic apps and a small change could result in a comprehensive redesign. The idea of microservices architecture with Docker containers as an option is so mind-blowing to him. "In other words you imply that you can change a part of the app without changing others?" he wonders.
When our time traveling mission ends, Dave is going to feel like he's left with a lot of nostalgia and wonder. The difficulties of the past, which were unconquerable before, are now smoothly overcome with the DevOps tools and techniques developed nowadays. However, the human factor—the creativity, problem-solving, and teamwork—nevertheless, is the constant, a reminding fact that technology is at its best when it enhances human potential.
In a world where AI and automation tend to be the norm, a trip down the memory lane from the '90s to now can provide a humorous yet thought-provoking reflection of how far we have come. It is a manifestation of the human intellect and an inspiration to the future of DevOps.