Ben Evans with DevOpsSpeakeasy at DevoxxMA 2022

hello and welcome to the devops

Speakeasy at devox Morocco my name is

Stephen chin I run the devrel team at

jfrog and I am joined by Ben Evans I am

Senior principal software engineer at

red hat and my job there is to be the

lead for observability Technologies in

Red Hat run times cool so awesome having

you here Ben to to talk about and so we

were we were chatting before but you you

were one of my first night hacking

interviews yeah on a motorcycle tour

that started in London that’s that’s

very true and I remember like when you

were setting up the Speakeasy here I’m

like that’s a lot of equipment that used

to be like a couple of camcorders in the

back of a little motorcycle pod yeah

we’ve clearly improved on the on the

setup upgraded um it doesn’t fit on a

motorcycle as well but it’s plane travel

everything pecks in a Pelican case and

anywhere in the world

but conferences not motorcycles for this

setup well sure I’m sure you’ve still

got like a motorcycle you know yeah we

do we do have a paired down version we

can take on the road

um and we are we are here in sunny

Morocco how are you enjoying the

Moroccan culture the it’s it’s my first

time in Morocco and it’s you know it’s

wonderful to be here the the conference

and the organizers have done a fantastic

job

um the hotel’s really nice you know the

beach and the pool you know I’m kind of

spoiled because I live in Barcelona but

but Morocco is kind of like next level

so nice so you’re really you’re really

enjoying this so

um I I’m enjoying Morocco as well I this

is my second time here I was at the

earlier event in Marrakesh which was

which was really nicely done but I think

like the especially in my session the

engagement’s been really good right

and I found that in both of mine as well

you know there’s been folks who are

really interested in it and I think it’s

maybe it’s it’s something about the um

the Devils Morocco Community because it

is you know it’s a big conference in uh

in the Middle East Africa and it brings

in a lot of people from from maybe a

slightly broader background than we

might expect in some of the European

devoxes

um so I had a lot of people who were in

especially my observability class who

came up to me often saying hey you know

I didn’t get that much out of the

examples because they’re all Java but

the concepts and the you know the way

that you were presenting you know the

ideas behind observability really fitted

in with what I was doing

that was really nice and it was just you

know as you say it’s engagement it’s um

yeah it’s a really nice Vibe yeah yeah

now this has been really good and um

we’re we’re going to be headed on a

speaker trip shortly we certainly are

you see so for the for the folks who are

watching this on video what you don’t

know is if we go if you go that way you

hit the pool and if you go a little

further you hit the beach and for the

first couple of days it’s not been great

waves but today for the first time

there’s actually a surf school out and

I’m looking that and I’m thinking

they’re small but you could you could

ride those waves so hopefully on the

speaker trip we’re going to go up the

coast a little bit and maybe get some

get some surfing in as well so yeah yeah

yeah that would be that would be really

good if we can all do that so I think

that that is part of the plan if folks

are interested to do a little bit of

surfing on the speaker trip

um I won’t I won’t be doing any surfing

though oh Steve come on we’ve got to get

you in the sea at least once while

you’re here I promise I promise it’s not

that cold yeah maybe we’ll go up to the

ankles yeah the water’s like 20 degrees

and that that’s Celsius I’ve got a I’ve

gotta you know make that clear for for

our American friends you know that’s

that’s not 20 degrees Fahrenheit that

would that would be crazy

yeah so that should be really exciting

and um also you you have a new location

now you’re not in London anymore right

yeah that’s absolutely true despite my

long association with the London Java

community

I’m actually living in Barcelona now and

it’s kind of a really interesting spot

because I didn’t realize this until

recently but

um it’s now ranked as like

third or fourth European city for Tech

wow like after London and Berlin and

maybe Paris and that’s that’s huge I had

no idea that there was quite so much

software and quite so much stack

um yeah it’s a really nice city it’s got

a lot going on

um the tech scene is very vibrant

um you know lots of startups

um so so yeah it’s it’s working out well

and the quality fantastic how’s your

how’s your Spanish coming along

little by little

um and it gets out I mean actually one

of the things I find hardest about

Morocco is

um obviously lots of people here speak

French and I find that I because I learn

French to speak French at school but

Spanish has now largely displaced the

French out of whatever bit of my brain

it was living in oh so your brain has

like like English and the other language

well it’s funny you said that because it

has English and it has apparently room

for one romance language whether French

or Spanish and obviously not Spanish and

it has room for German as well and I

think that’s my limit right so those

three but only one of them can be a like

it’s like Dungeons and Dragons I’ve used

up my romance language spell slot

um and learning learning Spanish is just

basically shuffling the French out nice

and um does does your does your shirt

help with with teaching the Spaniards or

the French yeah so let me just see if I

can people can can read it yeah I think

it’s on camera it’s pretty obvious yeah

um yes so this is this is basically just

a a joke from the from the folks at

radhat

um and this is this is our kubernetes

developer t-shirt

um I think it was originally from the

from the quarker spokes and guacus’s Red

Hats

um kubernetes Native Java

um which is just really nice

um and yes they produce these t-shirts

kind of as a joke but what’s funny about

it is is because as I think people know

kubernetes is a Greek word

listening to French people trying to

pronounce kubernetes is really really

funny

so so yeah so the t-shirt is here as a

kind of a an aid Memoir there we go a

bit of French

um to my to my French uh friends and

colleagues just in case they get stuck

on how to pronounce kubernetes it’s it’s

kind of right here on me yeah that’s

that’s very helpful because even

American people get it wrong

yeah or Greek is is not our our first

language yeah I mean if you want to hear

it perfectly you know you need to ask

you know yogos or or Heinz kibbutz or

one of those guys to uh to pronounce it

for you and then you’ll get the you’ll

get the real pronunciation

yeah so we we kicked off a new open

source project called Persia yeah and

everybody sees the word which is like

it’s pyro fire like and and they look at

and they’re like oh Persia

the country or the previous country but

no no

I I did wonder actually here’s what I

thought when I first said about it it’s

a great project I’m really looking

forward to learning more about it

um it looks like a spicing thing because

Steve deserted the Java side has he gone

to python because of course it’s py

hahaha

so that that was my reaction it wasn’t

it wasn’t thinking about that about that

pleasure of the country yeah so that

that’s that’s one interpretation of it

and like another one is

um actually the majority of the code

base for um Persia is ridden rust

yep a language which I have a deep fund

this for

um I think there’s actually gonna be a

rust talk later on today which I’m like

yeah yeah there is there was one

yesterday by um Alex and there’s another

another one today so I was interested to

see that one yeah and it’s I think it’s

interesting because it’s um you know I

sometimes have this this quote that

basically when it started 26 so I guess

27 years ago now

Java was considered a very controversial

language right there were people in the

CNC Plus World especially who were like

this is crazy you’ve got an interpreted

virtual machine thing and you’ve got

garbage collection that’s going to be

way too expensive at runtime and what’s

happened is that the it was at the

beginning

it was you know then we got a jet

compiler and some better CC algorithms

and things got better and computers got

faster and you know but that’s what

happened right Java started off as this

controversial opinionated way out their

language and the mainstream moved to

where Java is

so a lot of the ideas especially of

course I’m thinking about garbage

collection which were controversial in

our very mainstream so one of the things

that several things that I think is

interesting about rust

is

um it’s handling a memory because it’s

effectively the first language which

tries to go beyond garbage collection as

a paradigm you have manual memory

management then you have automatic

memory management and I draw a

distinction between that and real

guttlebitch collection it’s kind of

Technical and a bit pedantic but I think

there are two two separate pieces in

there and now Russ goes on further than

that and deals with well some people

call it compile time garbage collection

and it’s that’s kind of a bit lazy

um but it’s just bringing the the

aspects of memory management

in kind of into the type system yeah

yeah

um and that is that when I first saw

that and realized the implications of

that I thought wow this is a language

which has some really new ideas yeah no

I mean it has a basis and a lot of the

really powerful functional programming

languages which have never uh kind of

they’ve been academic

but rust is very much a language you can

write scalable Enterprise or embedded

systems or even their um in his keynote

for

um open source Summit Linus tervolds was

talking about they’re going to go beyond

just device drivers and rust and

actually start redoing some of the

kernel yeah and I think that’s that’s

needed because the memory safety aspects

of it are just so important and and mark

rasinovich from uh from Microsoft came

out with a statement the other day which

was a little bit controversial with some

people I I agreed with him where he said

the time has come to give up Greenfield

development in C plus

and I think that’s that’s that’s kind of

true I mean a few years back I was in

New York and um talking to

um Bianca strip you know the father of C

plus plus yeah and he was like well yeah

you know the domain for C plus plus when

it started was very big and it’s kind of

got smaller over time

so maybe what what Mr rosinovich was was

getting to is that um

maybe that Gap is really closing you

know now obviously we are pragmatic

programmers right you do not throw away

a working code base just because you

don’t like the language it’s written in

so C plus plus is going to be with us

for a long time to come

just because of the large amount of

extant C plus code there is right yeah

no absolutely but I I think especially

for like really widely used libraries

and like technologies that are pretty

pervasive it’s it’s really really hard

to

reason or or verify the correctness and

the the memory safety and the security

of like large complexity and C plus plus

code bases

and for the amount of effort you’d have

to do to to accomplish those sort of

security audits you’d probably be better

off rewriting it in a memory safe

language yes absolutely and I think even

in the current state to the rust

compiler it’s not that difficult to

write programs which a human being can

verify and can can see are safe and

correct that the rust compiler will

still reject now I think over time there

will be fewer and fewer of those

programs but they do still exist today

and in the uh a couple of years ago it

was actually quite easy to just confuse

the compiler and get something but

that’s the most philosophy right it

doesn’t matter you know what what you

think if the compiler can’t verify that

it’s correct exactly they’re not going

to do anything with it

so it’s it’s an interesting time I mean

when is it never not an interesting time

in software that’s one of the one of the

joyous and one of the difficulties of

the profession right exactly

no this is cool and it’s it’s been great

chatting with you about a variety like

observability new programming languages

Moroccan culture

so um what’s what’s the what’s the next

big thing for you

so I mean we mentioned observability I

mean that’s where I’m spending a lot of

my time at the moment I you know I think

I would Define my job at Red Hat as

being observability but that’s part of a

role to kind of help Safeguard the Java

platform and the investment that our

customers and the community and red hat

itself has made in it you know there’s

still there’s still life in the old dog

yet there’s still plenty of years worth

of usable great stuff we can get out of

java but it has to move with the times

and that means being a first-class

citizen for observability because you

know the cloud Paradigm is not going

away

and as Cloud architectures get more and

more complex as they become more Dynamic

and they change more rapidly you need to

be able to to understand what’s going on

and that’s what observability is so

that’s that’s my primary job but my real

goal is to think about the long-term

health

uh of the of the ecosystem so in terms

of observability the one thing I would I

would say to everybody that’s watching

um is if you haven’t already check out a

project called open Telemetry this is a

standards based approach cross-platform

every language type every framework to

do observability across Cloud

applications

um it’s uh being written as an open

standard all the working groups all of

it is is completely done in the open I

have been doing standards work for over

20 years and it is one of the nicest and

most well-run standards groups I’ve been

in so it’s been done the right way

and it’s being very rapidly adopted

um I saw one stat from a reservability

vendor that in less than 12 months

they switched on their open Telemetry

support and it was one third of their

total traffic inside that is enormous

growth so it may not be on your road

radar yet but I think it might be time

to just start doing some reading about

it

cool okay I think we join our audience a

lot to think about and research and

ruminate on including planning their

next trip to Morocco and you definitely

should come and visit Morocco um

next year thanks everyone all right

thanks Ben and enjoy the rest of the

devops Speakeasy interviews here at

devops Morocco