What are your strategies or processes to learn a stack or a Tool (K8S, Ansible, Docker, Jenkins)?

Pratik Vasagadekar
3 replies
I am trying to learn a few bits of Python and DevOps(K8S, Ansible, Docker, Jenkins) to recharge my career. My previous profile has been into System Administration for a Niche sector. So far, the only way I am able to keep the learnings in my head is to try sample projects, case studies, or challenges. IMO, some of the courses I have tried on Udemy or similar websites are pretty basic and comes with only a few projects to replicate. Do you have any link/website that provides an end-end case study as a project for getting hands-on training?

Replies

Piotr Gaczkowski
The main strategy is to find a product I want to build with it. With that, I am looking for resources helping me find my way around the new tool. For you use case, you can take an existing Open Source product such as Notejam or maybe something more complicate and build a CI/CD pipeline around it using the tools you want to learn.
Dakota L.
It depends. From my experience the docs provided by the authors/developers/maintainers are guaranteed to be more accurate than anything you'll find second hand (youtube, stack, etc). They might mean well and be useful for very specific issues, but I feel it's similar to asking the waitress how they made your steak (hint: they didn't). Additionally, the only way to have hands-on knowledge is to get hands on. Understanding what kinds of problems a tool solves is a large part of mastering a tool. By trying to skip it or have it handed to you, you'll never really have the depth to apply it correctly.