{"id":1954,"date":"2026-05-24T12:04:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-24T12:04:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/?page_id=1954"},"modified":"2026-09-03T17:23:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T17:23:09","slug":"about-2","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/about-2\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;If builders constructed buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.&#8221; &#8212;<strong>Weinberg&#8217;s Second Law of Software Engineering<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of what I write about here is DevOps, which is a set of practices, cultural philosophies, and tools that combine software <strong>development<\/strong> (Dev) and IT <strong>operations<\/strong> (Ops) to shorten the development lifecycle and deliver software more reliably and continuously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Core ideas:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><strong>Collaboration<\/strong> \u2014 breaks down the traditional wall between developers (who write code) and operations teams (who deploy and maintain it), encouraging shared responsibility throughout the entire lifecycle.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Automation<\/strong> \u2014 automates repetitive tasks like testing, building, and deployment, reducing human error and speeding up delivery.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Continuous Integration\/Continuous Delivery (CI\/CD)<\/strong> \u2014 code changes are frequently merged, tested automatically, and deployed to production in small, manageable increments rather than large, risky releases.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Monitoring &amp; feedback<\/strong> \u2014 systems are continuously observed in production, and that feedback loops back into development priorities.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><strong>Infrastructure as Code (IaC)<\/strong> \u2014 servers and environments are provisioned and managed through code (e.g., Terraform, Ansible) rather than manual configuration.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>The goal<\/strong> is to move from the old model \u2014 where dev and ops worked in silos, leading to slow releases and finger-pointing when things broke \u2014 to a model where teams ship faster, recover from failures quickly, and improve continuously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In practice, DevOps often involves tools like Git, Jenkins, Docker, Kubernetes, and cloud platforms, but the cultural shift (shared ownership, blameless post-mortems, iterative improvement) is considered just as important as the tooling. My preference is a Linux-LiteSpeed-MariaDB-PHP (LLMP) stack which is used for this site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">But I&#8217;m also human (I think)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I occasionally stray off-topic and write about things beyond programming. I&#8217;m human, after all. I not only program for the Internet, I also read what is on it\u2014and, occasionally, have opinions about it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I tend to be skeptical of just about everything and try to analyze things objectively rather than emotionally. I&#8217;m generally more interested in understanding a problem and finding solutions than in deciding who or what to blame. This may also explain why I&#8217;m not invited to many parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I also enjoy creative writing, and sometimes use satire, sarcasm, parody, exaggeration, or absurdity to make a point. Those things aren&#8217;t necessarily intended to be taken literally\u2014or even particularly seriously. The purpose is often to reframe an issue so that something familiar or controversial can be looked at from a different perspective and, ideally, encourage discussion rather than shut it down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There is a long tradition of doing this. George Orwell&#8217;s <em>Animal Farm<\/em> isn&#8217;t really about farming, and Jonathan Swift&#8217;s <em>A Modest Proposal<\/em> wasn&#8217;t a literal proposal for solving hunger. The absurdity was the point: sometimes exaggeration and satire can expose an idea more effectively than a strictly factual statement ever could.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, when I write something deliberately provocative or ridiculous, it is worth considering whether I&#8217;m making a literal claim\u2014or whether I&#8217;m using the absurdity to make a different point. Not everything I write is a position statement, and not every argument needs to begin with, &#8220;According to the latest peer-reviewed study&#8230;&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Sometimes a little humor is simply a better way to get people thinking.<br><br><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;If builders constructed buildings the way programmers write software, the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization.&#8221; &#8212;Weinberg&#8217;s Second Law of Software Engineering Most of what I write about here is DevOps, which is a set of practices, cultural philosophies, and tools that combine software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the &#8230; <a title=\"About\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/about-2\/\" aria-label=\"Read more about About\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-1954","page","type-page","status-publish"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1954","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1954\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.woodcentral.com\/-\/peter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}