I think the real genius of Docker was the image packaging. The pieces were there but delivery and scripting it all wasn't easy.

BSD jails were no harder to automate than Docker; setup many ci/cd pipelines into jails in the 00s for a variety of applications.

They're way closer to the usual "Unix" tool feel too. Docker feels 100% like an attempt to get rich by engineering a monolith rather than be a few helper C tools. Docker was so annoying to learn.

Fortunately with the end of ZIRP and SaaS deflation (in real user terms, not fake investment to project we still live in the 2010s heyday), software engineers are focused on engineering more than hype generation. Am excited about energy based models, capture of electromagnetic geometry of the machine as it runs programs.

60s style lexical state management systems dragged forward in time because of social momentum have little to do with engineering. Are hardly high tech in 2025.

Indeed. Even to this day, debootstrap feels a bit arcane and unapproachable, particularly relative to `docker pull ubuntu`.