[snickell]

I agree with the assertion that the core "hard tech" in K8S, docker, Ansible, etc has been with us a long time, and some of us did indeed use it.

That said, knowing what to mix and match to create a "pattern that you can learn and everyone uses and learns too" does contribute value, its essentially parallel to the value provided by linux distros.

I can "docker pull" from many different distros, with lots of premade apps.

I think the lesson for the "hard technology" folks is when you solve a hard technical problem DO think about setting up and promoting high-level standards with sane defaults. You are the most knowledgable person(s) for your "hard tech problem", and thereby often in the best position to standardize the default pattern by which it can be used.

That can contribute as much or more value than the hard technical work itself.

EDIT: also, don't forget to publish and promote STANDARDS giving a well documented "if you don't have a reason not to, do it this way" path for integrating useful tools together. That's essentially what docker is/did, and even though it can be recreated in a 100 lines of bash (https://github.com/p8952/bocker) the branding led to ~100,000 developers publishing containers that are fairly easy for anyone else to understand and build from.