More Difficult than Rocket Science: Chaos and Distributed Systems

There’s more chaos in planetary atmospheres than in the vacuum of space. Similarly, DevOps also deals with both the chaos of human interactions and the chaotic flow of data across systems. Maybe we can learn some strategies for handling that chaos from the field of meteorology and earth sciences.

Did you know that meteorology is more difficult than rocket science? It’s true! There’s more chaos in the systems in meteorology than you find in the vacuum of space*. Similarly, DevOps is also harder than rocket science because of the chaos of human interactions colliding with the everyday chaotic flow of data across systems. When we add in the complexity of distributed concurrent systems, we add a whole new level of chaos to the systems we interact with. How can we understand these systems from a holistic standpoint? How can we troubleshoot them better when an incident is occurring?

Let’s talk about the chaos inherent in DevOps, and maybe we can learn some strategies for handling that chaos from the fields of meteorology and earth sciences.

*Take this meteorology joke with a grain of salt; we can debate how much chaos there is in the vacuum of space some other time.