Platform engineering is the discipline of designing and building toolchains and workflows that enable self-service capabilities for software engineering organizations in the cloud-native era.

Platform Engineering

I sometimes find it difficult to explain the difference between cloud and cloud native for folks coming from the old guard. Kubernetes co-creators Craig McLuckie and Joe Beda go straight to the point in <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0p8MIezKkE|this video> and break down the distinction between cloud and cloud native. You might find it useful as well.

man there is so much in this sort video that I disagree strongly with.  I dont even want to think about unpacking that.

he starts with defining "cloud" with "anyone who happens to manage your hardware for you OR any vague handwavy management layer on top of your own hardware" and goes on from there.

sigh.

:fire:

I understood it as him saying that it's a service that provides a level of management whether they are managing hardware or other things ..... it's a way to outsource the management and running of systems... I'd be interested in knowing what you think is a better way to describe it perhaps <@U03Q4E1A49E>?

"cloud" is api driven infrastructure, period.    api driven services on top of api driven infra is just services on top of cloud.

extending it to "management" without constraining it to API is massively overbroad (and means that 1and1, godaddy, and your mom and pop datacenter around the corner are all cloud providers too.).

"the cloud" on the other hand is different. as viewed by people outside of the industry.  that's basically "the internet".   but that's not what he's pretending to talk about.

and "cloud native" _once_ would have been
&gt; software designed to operate in very ephemeral environments, such as operated by cloud providers
but the cloud providers have changed.

"cloud native" could have meant
&gt; software designed to operate directly in cloud providers, taking first class advantage of native services and apis.   
but what "cloud native" means today is
&gt; a marketing term around the entire suite of for-profit companies who are part of the cloud native foundation
all of whom are in the business of selling software/support to people _building software_ - and has nothing to do with actual cloud-first software architecture.

. o O ( the fact that "cloud native" == k8s in almost all use cases directly shows how it's not about "cloud" but about a cloud-free value add layer on top of cloud. )

nice thanks for that explanation <@U03Q4E1A49E> :slightly_smiling_face: