Why your company should have a Developer's Kit and how to build one
summary
Argues that a company-wide Developer's Kit removes Docker tradeoffs and speeds onboarding by providing concrete scripts and defaults: a Ruby gem (getlab-development-kit), a companion repo with per-service folders, procfile + foreman to run processes, Make and Rake tasks, and simple Postgres/Redis data folders. Shows exact commands (gdk init, gdk install, gdk run, gdk reconfigure, gdk update), claims it runs GitLab locally without containers, is hackable, and cuts onboarding time/cost (example ~10 days ≈ $4k/dev).
AI-written summary · about
chapters (10)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:05Why build a dev kit
- 4:00Cost of onboarding developers
- 7:38Principles for dev tooling
- 10:53Why not Docker
- 14:50Local dev without containers
- 16:48Make files for automation
- 22:38Rake tasks in Ruby
- 25:28GitLab’s Developer Kit
- 29:10Summary and call to action
related talks
24mRemote development can improve your developers remote work experience
22mOnboarding Doesn’t Have to Suck: Elevating Developer Onbo...
43mThe Developer's Toolkit: Everything We Use But Ruby
44mPlatform Engineering 101: Building Internal Developer Platforms
42mDeveloper-first Workflows on Kubernetes
32mBuilt With Love - Why Developer Experience Matters
31mReady To Code: Automate Your Development Environment
45mAn Open Source Approach to Driving Developer Efficiency