In episode 1, I have touched about my direction of being an operations guy moving towards being a SRE. That is a long journey with many beautiful scenic routes as well as pitfalls. I did explain briefly about the tools i am using in AWS to pave this journey as well as the little things like indulging myself with Cloudformation and FaaS (Function as a Service).

For episode 2, we continue…

We did notice, the first step out from operations is being a developer

AWS has pride itself in being a developer-centric platform, from its RESTful API to the induction of FaaS environments like Lambda. Lambda uses Java, Python or NodeJS. Blurry! 🙂  So how does an operations guy make the first step in making in roads to being a developer?

Well, I have to say, a developers mind, is amazing; from the ability of writing many types of languages to developing software. These guys are like creators. Me, an operations guy, I am like a doctor, i get problems all the time, i fix them, no problems, happy day. But this is diminishing because systems are getting very immune to failures, with the introduction of H.A, Self Healing applications and lesser complicated machinery which works on small functions of code to run a software (micro-service architecture?) So where does the operations guy fit in this realm?  How do we do it?

Lesson 1: Change your mindset. 
Switch your mindset! Now from being a doctor, you would have to apply that body of knowledge to become a creator instead. Think about it….. to solve a problem you would have to know the architecture well enough to isolate the problem and fix it… now whats changed, is the direction. You now create.

Lesson 2: Learn a Language.
Learn a language! ffs theres million of languages. some do Java, some do python, some do Go, some do NodeJS, hell, its like a freaking universe of languages. Gotta admit, Developers are demigods. Now, where do i fit in? Perhaps learn YAML or JSON? Mind you, my focus is AWS. Something to build some resources on AWS.  Smalls wins grow to become bigger wins. Learning Java, or Python, or any other language might be a challenge considering the “genetic” make up of an operations guy who has no patience in writing stuff, but building quick fixes and moving on. Now comes the next lesson.

Lesson 3: Patience.
Patience, my young paduwan…
Being in Ops, you/I/anyone is probably the fastest person around to jump into it and fix the problem. Well, development is not like that. You will need to break the patience barrier and be ready for fail, fail, fail and more fail. BUT again, fail fast and rise again. And again, we are not fixing fires, and looking for quick fixes… we are now looking for more permanent, and sustainable solutions which use code and is reusable next time. That takes time. Like Diamonds.

Personally, i am at Lesson 1, i am learning to be a Creator, and i am slowly transitioning into learning a language, which is Lesson 2. In the next episode, i shall introduce a little problem i am trying to fix which would test my patience, which is Lesson 3. Till next time… happy developing, mr./ms. ops 🙂