Programming for the Unhappy Path with Principal Crafter Jeff Ramnani

Programming for the Unhappy Path with Principal Crafter Jeff Ramnani

Jerome Goodrich
Jerome Goodrich

March 24, 2023

Will AI take our jobs? If only software products were that simple.

New technologies notoriously spark our imagination in ways that don’t match the frustrating realities of integrating complex systems. That’s why so many teams embrace low-code and no-code solutions as convenient ways to expand their capabilities within the happy-path use-cases.

But what happens when it’s time to pivot and you need to add new software to your workflow? In this episode, I spoke with Jeff Ramnani, principal crafter at 8th Light, about rethinking assumptions about popular DevOps tools and considering downstream implications when making architectural decisions.

If I’m a business leader making decisions about a solution I should solve a problem with, I think a big thing is to empower your people, but also be mindful of, if you reach the limits of this, what is my escape hatch? How can I access the data within the system … to pull it out and write a custom software system that does whatever the tool we bought was doing, but does it the way our business needs it to be done.
— Principal Crafter Jeff Ramnani

Instead of urging caution, Jeff advises teams to go even further by expanding their understanding beyond the tools they’re already using.

One thing I don’t want people to walk away with is you shouldn’t use Ansible, for example, because I think there’s a ton of value in that tool. I just wouldn’t stop there. I spent a lot of time in my career plateaued there, and I see a lot of other folks plateau there, and I’d like to make the case that if you push through and also embrace and practice programming, a greater power awaits, and you get more leverage to accomplish your goals faster and more straightforward.
— Principal Crafter Jeff Ramnani

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