[rglover]

A safe heuristic is that whenever you introduce an abstraction to any tech stack, you can assume that it makes shortcuts that you wouldn't have to if you implemented the underlying parts yourself (w/ zero guarantee that it makes those shortcuts well). The latter meaning: short-term harder, long-term easier. Invert for any abstraction.

Related to Docker, I finally bit down and tried to do a simple deployment stack myself using systemd and OS-level dependencies instead of containers. I'll never go back. The simplicity of the implementation (and maintenance of it) made Docker irrelevant—and something I look at as a liability—for me. There's something remarkably zen about being able to SSH into a box, patch any dependency issues, and whistle on down the road.