The elephant in the room: People who have gotten over the K8s learning curve almost all tell you it isn't actually that bad. Most people who have not attempted the learning curve, or have just dipped their toe in, will tell you they are scared of the complexity.

An anecdotal datapoint: My standard lecture teaching developers how to interact with K8s takes almost precisely 30 minutes to have them writing Helm charts for themselves. I have given it a whole bunch of times and it seems to do the job.

> People who have gotten over the K8s learning curve almost all tell you it isn't actually that bad.

I have been using K8s for nearly a decade. I use it both professionally and personally. I chose to use it personally. I appreciate why it exists, and I appreciate what it does. I believe that I have gotten over the learning curve.

And I will tell you: it really is that bad. I mean, it’s not worse than childhood cancer. But it is a terrible, resource-heavy, misbegotten system. Its data structures are diseased. Its architecture is baroque. It is a disaster.

But it’s also useful, and there is currently no real alternative. There really should be, though. I strongly believe that there can be, and I hope that there will be.

The first time someone started writing templated YAML should have been the moment of clarity.

> My standard lecture teaching developers how to interact with K8s takes almost precisely 30 minutes to have them writing Helm charts for themselves

And I can teach someone to write "hello world" in 10 languages in 30 minutes, but that doesn't mean they're qualified to develop or fix production software.

I personally know many k8s experts that vehemently recommend against using it unless you have no other option.