I introduced Beck last time. Today we’re going to learn why he decided to leave the comfortable world of C#.

One word: Kubernetes.

Beck wrote software that ran on beefy Windows VMs on beefy servers in corporate data centers. There were smart people who built and maintained those servers. Beck had no interest in learning their job. But from time to time he did think about the Big Idea. If the Big Idea struck, it’d probably need servers to run on. The thought of that hassle and expense threw cold water on his daydreams.

“But Dude! The Cloud!”, says the Voice.

Beck’s reply: “Yeah… but still, VMs, and patching, and load balancing, and, and… It still feels too Opsy and not enough Devy.”

“But dude…” The Voice drops to an excited yet conspiratorial whisper, “Kubernetes!”

A raised brow — “What is this Kubernetes of which you speak?”

“You write your service and put it in a container, which is like a light, maintenance free, micro VM. Kubernetes is this magical infrastructure that’ll take your containers, make as many copies as needed to handle load, scale up, scale down, etc. It handles the load balancing. You never have to think about servers again.”

“Whoa! The barriers are gone! Zero cost? The Big Idea has a chance!”

“Only catch is Kubernetes containers run Linux, but I suppose you could use .NET Core.”

“I’m going to take over the world!”