devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: developer

  • Our Infrastructure is Still Expanding

    Our Infrastructure is Still Expanding

    You would think that sooner or later, marketers and early adopters would take a rest, but it seems that if one group slows down for a bit, another picks up. Our infrastructure is expanding in almost every possible way, and this creates more of a burden on every aspect of DevOps, specifically in IT.

    We have more security needs because we have a larger footprint, for example. We have long had APIs, but now we have massive API groups that are used and re-used, and while standard code scanning works with the source, the companies doing “API security” start with security of the interface, not the code. That is slowly changing, but API management is also impacted, and organizations that determined they didn’t need API management because adjacent markets were serving enough of their needs are slowly discovering that with proliferation comes the need to look at API management again.

    I stay up to date on most new technology because, as an industry analyst, what is coming can inform my discussions of what a given technology space looks like today. But even for me—someone who is not spending a huge chunk of my day coding or working on the toolchain or perfecting the new deployment platform—it can be hard to stay abreast of everything. While one of the foundational tenets of DevOps was no specialization and a shared workload, I think everyone now agrees with what a few of us were saying from day one: Some specialized skills are still needed, except in corner cases. But we certainly are sharing workloads more broadly and far more responsive, so DevOps is absolutely a massive success. Site reliability engineering (SRE) extends that success but focuses more on Ops. I’m really not a huge fan. I like that DevOps wanted to merge the processes and make the management of applications more holistic; I don’t think re-dividing it is the best idea out there. Like every title, “SRE” is interpreted pretty broadly. Some roles really involve DevOps (but SRE sounds cooler), and other organizations are just replacing ‘developer’ with DevOps and ‘operations’ with SRE. However, most are using SRE to manage the entire environment in which the app runs.

    Where are we going? Constant change. That’s the answer. I’ve waited for the breather for a couple of decades, but since VMs were popularized, it has been non-stop and will continue to be.

    This means a lot to you, to your viability as an employee, and to hiring. With the glut of people on the market, we’re seeing a resurgence of “must know every tool in our toolchain” type position postings. Of course, you must not, in a world where the combination of languages, frameworks, CI/CD tools, alerting, and monitoring tools would make a great college-level combinatorics equation. You add value by being adaptable. Both to your current employer and to future ones. The key thing you should seek to demonstrate is your ability to pick up and master new technologies when required. Do it on your current job to show worth, and keep a record of it for your next job. I’ve been a hiring manager off and on forever, and when the market is flooded with good candidates, that is the type of differentiator that gets the team’s attention. Do it; make it something worth doing and document that you did it. You won’t regret it.

    A group of us were helping a recent grad figure out what to do with their career a couple weeks ago, and the consensus was “avoid AI until it shakes out.” This is not the first time I’ve heard that advice—it’s not even the first group I was a part of giving that advice. And I agree in the general sense, but certainly in places where it is being implemented by all vendors in the space and it adds value, you do need to be aware of how it works and what you can do with it, and a project is one way to get that knowledge.

    It is still a rolling opportunity, and you are still keeping the lights on. I’ve seen people who worry they’re not doing enough. Any employer worth working for wants you to keep the systems running first, and everything else after—so if you’re doing that, you’re doing enough. Now go beyond. And keep rocking it. This new technology hasn’t implemented itself, and it isn’t self-maintaining (yet) … That’s all you.

  • Anima Adds Ability to Personalize Generative AI Code

    Anima Adds Ability to Personalize Generative AI Code

    Anima today revealed is has added an ability to personalize the code its generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform creates based on how an application is described using tools from Figma and Adobe.

    That capability makes it possible for the code being generated to resemble the coding style of an organization or specific developer more closely.

    Anima CEO Avishay Cohen said the company developed this capability to reduce the editing time that is otherwise required when trying to embed code generated by a large language model (LLM) within an application that has a well-defined coding methodology.

    The platform that Anima provides is based on a mix of LLMs and heuristics that the company developed to generate code. In this case, the code being generated is written in React or HTML to make it simpler to build an application’s front end. In contrast, a general-purpose LLM such as ChatGPT is not optimized for creating these types of graphical applications.

    Developers no longer need to worry about, for example, making sure each pixel is perfectly placed because the Anima platform automates that part of the application development process, including adding responsive behavior, animations and logic, noted Cohen. In addition, customized instructions may be applied to an entire project or even a specific component.

    In effect, the platform enables backend developers to automatically create a front-end for their application from a description in tools provided by Figma or Adobe. As a result, developers can allocate more time to writing business logic and optimizing application performance, said Cohen.

    Later this year, Anima will integrate its platform with GitHub and other continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platforms as part of an effort to extend the reach of the platform across an entire codebase, he added.

    There is, of course, already no shortage of generative AI tools for writing code, but the degree to which they have been incorporated into DevOps workflows varies from one organization to the next. Much of the code created using platforms such as ChatGPT can vary widely in terms of quality. These platforms were trained using code collected from across the web so it’s not uncommon for the code generated to include known vulnerabilities that DevOps teams need to scan before incorporating into a build. In other cases, the code generated might simply break when installed.

    Regardless of these issues, however, the amount of code being generated by machines is only going to increase, especially as more LLMs that are specifically trained to create code based on examples that have been closely vetted become more widely available.
    In the meantime, developers who never especially enjoyed building the visual front ends of applications can now focus more of their time on tasks they prefer. Alternatively, developers who specialize in the front ends of applications will find that much of the toil involved will soon be automated in a way that should provide more time for them to create customized experiences.

    One way or another, the overall pace at which applications are built is about to exponentially increase. The challenge now will be finding ways to take advantage of AI to enable DevOps teams to keep pace.