Application Development Strategies on Kubernetes

Breaking Down the Problem

• How are the lives of developers going to change when adopting Kubernetes?

• Kubernetes is quite far towards the ops side
  • Usual response is that developers shouldn’t care where the application is deployed!
  • Correct answer—it depends!
    • Depends on which parts of the process devs have ownership of

Three Patterns

Traditional Local Development

• App devs responsible for code up to check in
• Still needs to be built etc.—not responsibility of devs
• Usual dev role in most orgs
• Devs not impacted by runtime
• Downside: difficult for second team to containerize code—didn’t write it, devs know dependencies best

Development in Containers

• Devs own responsibility of containerization
• Need new tools e.g. Dockerfiles, Buildpacks
• Move devs towards ops side—closer to DevOps-style shared ownership
• Still not a lot to do with Kubernetes!

Developing Directly on Kubernetes

• Devs own responsibility to define how apps run on Kubernetes
  • YAML manifests
• Need Kubernetes development environment e.g. Minikube, GKE
• Tools: Cloud Code IDE plugin, Skaffold