Openstack summit

http://developer.rackspace.com jesse.noller@rackspace.com everett.toews@rackspace.com
Focusing on Developer Experience
OpenStack Summit, Atlanta 2014
!
Jesse Noller @jessenoller
Everett Toews @everett_toews

The problem.
So, I’m here with Everett to have an honest, opinionated and frank discussion.

We’re approaching over thirty “clients” on git.
Yup, we’re closing in on close to 30 clients in the git repos - these are the clients you need to install and use as a developer for
communicating with a fully feature openstack cloud. Think about that.
This is just one symptom of a larger problem.

Why in gods name are we in a quagmire that’s spreading?

It’s a deﬁnition & audience problem.
When I say “developers” who are you thinking of?

“Users and developers" to the openstack community are people building clouds. You can see this at this conference as most of the
people and audience have an "Ops" mindset or are actively contributing/building clouds. Johnathon called it out - 600+ operators here.

Cloud builders selling clouds to cloud builders.
I’m serious.

Inception.
This. Is. Inception. We’re 10 levels deep here folks

Time to reset.
Time to reset some terminology.

OpenStack Developers
First: OpenStack Developers are those building the cloud operating system known as OpenStack

Application Developers
Second: Application Developers are the rest of the world of developers trying to write applications on “the cloud” Sometimes the two
are mixed, but these are the ones ignored

What made Amazon a technology giant in 8 years?
Second: Application Developers is the rest of the world of developers trying to write applications on “the cloud” Sometimes the two are
mixed, but these are the ones ignored

Application Developers
The problem is we largely ignore them - not through malice, but through the evolution of the project: "We want to build a cloud OS", naturally
attracts people wanting to build a cloud, then run the cloud. Its OPs all the way down.

Vendors Too
It’s not just openstack; most of the vendors in our community ignore them as well because we’re all in the middle of a fundamental disruption in the
market. What was true 10 years ago isn’t anymore.

What makes a platform?
But what makes a platform? What fundamentally drives the adoption cycle & makes a cloud are the developers who consume it and build
applications that through their value and audience showcase the underlying platform and technology.

Application Developers writing things on your
platform.
Software is eating the world & Application developers are the new kingmakers if you haven’t already read the research by Redmonk and others - the
market data backs this. Application developers are the key drivers of technology adoption today; from enterprise to startups, garages and more.

What do I need to write an application
on an OpenStack cloud?
What do I need to write an application on an openstack cloud, in the programming language of my choice without having to build my
own network effect, ecosystem and abstraction. Namely, Everything. We’re consistently failing the key audience we need to care about
our platform

Developer Experience (DX)
Let’s talk about Developer Experience

developer experience is inspired by the User Experience practice. It sees developers as a special case of overall users.
It is the practice of understanding how developers get their work done and optimizing for that.

– Pamela Fox
“The sum of all interactions and events both
positive and negative, between a developer
and a library, tool or API.”
This quote from Pamela Fox really brings it home for me. “The sum of all interactions and events both positive and negative, between a
developer and a library, tool or API.”

But why focus?
But why focus?

Again: You need the group on the right!

Network Effects.
Network effects are imperative to the growth of a platform. It is the net effect that one user of a good or service has on the value of that
product to other people. The better the experience? The more promoters and adopters

Network effects help build ecosystems.
The army of promoters; swayed by their peers help build the ecosystem. Example: AWS: because of the network effect & ecosystem behind AWS,
we hear the constant refrain and pressure of cloning their APIs just so we can piggy back on the existing community of developers and tools!

Network effects + rich or rapidly growing ecosystems build innovative usage; innovative usage feeds the system.
This is the virtuous cycle of promoters creating things on your platform!

Examples
Great Examples

Twilio Everything you need in one click.
Look at twilio’s page - one click, you’re here. From the home page! Developers are the key to their market and they
know it

Stripe Getting Started, Reference Examples
And another: Stripe. It’s IaaS (or, Money as a Service) - again, Developers are critical; one click, great reference
examples.

Mailgun Who, What, How, examples!
mailgun - another one. Mail as a service. Its value, what it is, why it is, right. there.

Great (App) developer portals answer:
• Do I want to use it? (Features? Stable?)
• How do I sign up? (Low friction/cost/barrier?)
• How do I get started? (Not. DevStack.)
• How do I use it? (Downloads for my language/env)
• How do I get help? (Dev. Docs, Forums, Email - Peers!)
Do I want to use it? How do I sign up? How do I get started? How do I use it? How do I get help?
Making things simple, intuitive, engaging and showing developers how to be successful & enjoy building something using the platform
is imperative.

- Troy Toman, or Chewbacca, not sure.
“Every investment we make in (OpenStack)
usability brings dividends to the entire
community through these network effects.”
I wasn’t sure of it was Troy or Chewbacca who said this “Every investment we make in (OpenStack) usability brings dividends to the entire
community through these network effects.”

What can we do today?
We need to stand up within the community and the development of openstack itself to advocate for those using openstack to build
applications if we want to succeed.

• Dean Troyer’s Client Tools Program
• http://bit.ly/clienttools
• Python-OpenStackSDK
• http://bit.ly/pyosSDK
• The OpenStack UX Team
• More Application Builder focused documentation
Join Dean Troyer’s client tools program: contribute. The unified python SDK aims to be the common back end and eventually deprecate
those 30+ clients. The UX team; help build app developer focused documentation.

SDKs for developers in other languages
.Net, PHP, Python, Ruby, Perl, Java, Go!

Adaption to common industry standard DevOps
tools (vagrant) and more!
We need to link in and adapt to *existing* open source and standard tools for development, devops and deployment. Stop reinventing
the wheel.

a few bad things to do (that have been done)

Things like changing APIs between versions can be
disastrous for adoption.
Don’t do this without a long, communicated deprecation period. Conservatism can be a virtue of large open source projects. Keep core
solid

Changing underlying behavior or contracts without a longer
deprecation policy.
Again, less on the API layer - look at errors returned, expected behavior. People need to know they can count on us.

Tell people they’re doing it wrong.
Amazon does this - “design for failure, if you don’t, you suck” - we can not do this. We have to teach and educate and be honest with our
limits. On the other hand, if you’re using a cloud as a VPS thingie or managed colo box, you are doing it wrong.

• We have a discoverable portal dedicated to
application developers
• It speaks to success when using the platform
• It talks about speed of development on top of
OpenStack
• It showcases other successful applications built on
the platform; and why the platform made it
successful
We have a discoverable portal dedicated to application developers
It speaks to success when using the platform
It talks about speed of development on top of OpenStack
It showcases other successful applications built on the platform; and why the platform made it successful

Who will be the Instagram/Pinterest/etc on
OpenStack?
Success is when we can answer this: Who will be the Instagram/Pinterest/Cat Social empowered by OpenStack?

What else do we need to do?
So, let’s address some other concerns - what else do we need to do to succeed?

Engage the board, the technical committee, the
UX team and others to build a solid, consistent
voice for application developers and consumer of
OpenStack clouds.
We have to engage: we have to advocate for developers inside of the community, inside of the foundation. We have to look outward and
ask developers what they want, what they need.

Get vendors working with one another on common
SDKs & Tools - work from prior art if at all possible
Vendors: Rackspace included, have to engage with one another and build from common tools. No more reinventing the wheel.

Dig into the user survey.
My coworker Everett recently got an application developer section into the user survey. We have to act on that data, and moreover, we
need to get that survey out of our echo chamber

Drop the dogma.
I’ve been in the python community - what - 12 years or something like that? But the fact is, the developer world and community is bigger
than that, and Python isn’t always the right tool. Welcome other languages, methods and systems

Pressure the vendors.
We need to pressure the vendors for interoperability. We need them all to have amazing developer experiences from end to end, when 1
developer has a bad openstack experience on one vendor? All of us lose.

And now for my buddy Everett to take it home

developer.yahoo.com massive portfolio
yahoo

developers.google.com/cloud/ breadth, depth & conﬁdence.
google

developer.github.com simplicity & clarity in action.
github

It works for Open Source too!
It's not just commercial interests!

developer.mozilla.org changing the web
mozilla

developer.gnome.org keep it simple
gnome

developer.openstack.org We just got it!
developer.openstack.org

Developer.openstack.org is the first step on a long road. It took months just to get it to where it is because of the difference of focus
between the community and others.

Thank You!

Openstack summit

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