CloudNativeCon + KubeCon 2016

Containers have revolutionized the way that people build and manage distributed systems. More and more they are becoming the “assembly language” for modern, scalable distributed applications. But if containers are the “assembly language”, most people deploying distributed systems are actually still programming in this “assembly language.”

But what if, instead of writing in “assembly” we started writing our distributed systems, in higher level languages, that compiled to containers? Traditionally this has been the task of domain specific languages like Puppet, Chef, Salt or Ansible. In contrast, in this talk, I show how a general purpose programming language (in this case JavaScript) can be used to write programs that compile to a distributed system of containers that is then deployed onto Docker containers.

Using a general purpose programming language unlocks significant value for users. They now have a large array of development tools, from unit test frameworks, to code style conventions at their disposal. Further, the (optional) use of a single language that describes both the pieces of the distributed system as well as the manner in which these pieces are composed, radically simplifies building and maintaining such a system. This in turn increases application reliability and agility for developers.