[avsm]

An extremely random fact I noticed when writing the companion article [1] to this (an OCaml experience report):

    "Docker, Guix and NixOS (stable) all had their first releases
    during 2013, making that a bumper year for packaging aficionados."

Now we get coding agent updates every week, but has there been a similar year since 2013 where multiple great projects all came out at the same time?

[1]: https://anil.recoil.org/papers/2025-docker-icfp.pdf

[ezst]

hg and git came weeks apart and fossil shortly after if that counts

[esseph]

TBH I feel as if only docker belongs in that list. Guix and nix have users, sure, but not remotely like docker.

[NewJazz]

Yeah they are way better than docker for packaging

[atomicnumber3]

Why is docker used by far the most, then?

[ufocia]

Laziness

[pas]

docker got popular because it had better DX (better tooling), it was like a super lightweight VM (and initially people really wanted to put init and SSH into containers)

easy but powerful, it's not just packaging, it's also a very basic deployment system too. (docker ps) and said better allowed a relatively foolproof cross-platform develop-deploy loop.