Forum Site Debates “AWS Killing DevOps Professional” In the midst of ongoing debate about the definition of “DevOps”, a question was posted today on Hacker News. It asked: How do you define DevOps? And is it dead? Is DevOps dead as a profession? Although “zabana” did not specify the source of the “AWS Killing DevOps” discussion, it could refer to the HN post “Managed Services Killed DevOps” which was published last year. It references a TechCrunch article that does mention AWS and has 148 comments. The post today could be at that level, as some readers are still having trouble understanding DevOps. It gained popularity in the latter half of 2012 and early 2013. According to Google Trends, this is a post that may reach that level. Hacker News readers are not the only ones trying to understand what this term means. Here are some answers to today’s post.

• “It’s a good moment to take a step back and define (or revise) the definition of DevOps. It’s a great term for an interesting movement, but I think it has become a synonym for ‘Ops. ”
• “DevOps” can be defined as a method of developing software to respond to operational tasks. We also allow other types of operations like checking-in and out books from a library.
• “DevOps” is the combination of people, processes, and products that enable continuous delivery value to our end-users.
• “DevOps” is when one person or a team is responsible for the software’s development, configuration, and maintenance.
• “Dev-ops is a way a company has shaped their delivery process. This does not mean that there is a devops job. It means that a developer is in direct contact with an operator or tester, or vice versa.
• “It is the empowerment of a single developer through (intelligent use of modern methods and hardware to achieve what required a team size of approximately 10-20 in the past.”

Wikipedia defines DevOps “a term used for a set of practices which emphasize collaboration and communication between software developers and IT professionals while automating software delivery and infrastructure modifications.” The term was also first used in 2009. Many of the answers to today’s question were basically “no”. The most popular answer to today’s question is: “No.” AWS is our toolbox. It is our toolbox. We use it to create, build, deploy, and maintain cost-effective, scalable solutions for our clients’ problems. Although it sounds like marketing BS, that is our main focus. We’ll automate everything we can, including deployment and scaling. Maybe our definition of DevOps is more broad or holistic than what most people in the industry use. Either way, AWS is not automatic, and automating/orchestrating ALL of its parts still requires some human smarts.Here are parts of other answers:

• “I don’t believe there is any reason to worry that devops will disappear, regardless of your viewpoint. In the next five years, I may have to change my mind but for now, I am confident that the devops way will not die.
• “The movement is not dead. This mindset can be beneficial to many large organizations. The problem is that many people find it difficult to change.
• “Not dead at all, and certainly not killed by AWS.”
• “Hell no. You must know the AWS API if you are in DevOps.
• “No devops are dead.” It is a way of working.”

It seems that there is not much agreement on the definition of DevOps. However, Hacker News readers don’t believe the profession has been killed.