The main problem with Backstage (BS) is that while it does provide some canned functionality, any extension of that functionality requires the utilization of their plugins system and wholesale buy-in to their ecosystem. Welcome to Wordpress for enterprise developers folks!
The plugin system isn't bad - but its a false narrative to believe you plunk this down and get some sort of valuable developer portal at an enterprise level (small biz sure - fortune 500...yeah no).
Spotify does open-source a number of their plugins, but after having looked extensively at which ones they make available and which ones we would have to write (and deal with their plugin system for) we opted out. The cost/benefit ratio is definitely there for a technical writer, but IMO its not there for serious development. (Pls - Anyone who disagrees with that - begin by telling me why you don't use Joomla as a base for all your custom applications )
Team integration at a company level is another challenge with Backstage. GitHub (the basis and sort of harvested DB for BS) is largely disconnected from company structures and AD and all the things for most companies. Yes GitHub enterprise is a thing... no in general its still not connected to company structures. There are teams in Backstage, but they are generally managed in isolation from the rest of the company which presents its own challenges and integration problems with other systems. Don't even get me started on the fact that asking everyone to put their service defintions in specific files in specific places in GitHub is no better/worse than making them enter it into a ui or spreadsheet or confluence article or anything except now its scattered in 10,000 repos - good luck getting everyone to change that.
Ultimately this isn't software that you simply install and use. Its a base that will likely require extension, and doing so means going down a one way path of adoption. Nothing it does is compatible with anything else. Is that good for Spotify - sure. Lots of folks helping build software they want to use is great. Is it good for the community? I'm not so sure. This article felt like a paid add (not suggesting it was - just saying it read like one) more than an honest plus/minus of the software and is anyone really surprised a technical writer couldn't build a proper enterprise developer portal by themselves? In other news - water is wet, the sky is blue and my kid wants to watch youtube.
Indeed, Backstage is a framework for creating a developer portal, not a ready-made product.
I used to work on a consultancy (https://frontside.com) who's specializing in adopting Backstage at Fortune 500s like HP. When you adopt Backstage at scale, you rely on processors that scan your LDAP, GitHub, etc to discover, stitch, and feed cohesive data to the software catalog. HP is giving a talk next month on how they manage 100,000+ entities in Backstage.
Backstage does a lot of heavy lifting that I'd rather use than have to build from scratch.
Our companies evaluators picked up Cortex for a service registry offering because it did more for them faster, but they may switch over to backstage in time if they find the integration straightforward enough
How about just using github? or if you want more how about building a a node/vue app? Or for docs scrounge up any static doc creation system and thereyago. most have some really editing features and BEHOLD markdown with colors!
I'm being a little silly there but my issue isn't that this isn't valuable software in the right situation. My issues is that its presented as some sort of magic bullet for a specific documentation issue when the problems described are generally not software related or software solved.
Most of what is presented in the article isn't about BS doing what this person attempted to do for 2 years. Its about switching paradigms and letting folks document in their repos instead of in a centralized system. One could just as easily look over the repos in a github org and go to those files in a repo. Both solutions require standardizing where things are documented..... so does a centralized system.
The big callout should be that when trying to centralize docs that align to apps they become disconnected from the apps themselves and thus its a pita to get everyone to do everything in 2 places. I'd be very curious if they completely turned off BS if there would be any loss... if not why bother with the overhead. Templating and other things are well handled by MS Clis, cookie-cutter or other more portable concepts and who needs yet another team and resource mgmt system. Splunk and other off the shelf systems can easily provide more comprehensive and robust stats and generally speaking there is a more enterprise level solution for just about everything it does.
Yes BS is a swiss army knife but when was the last time you saw a chef use one of those in the kitchen?
Oldschool solution that I have used many times is to setup an oldschool internal Wiki (can be hosted on anything). This gets used as an internal resource for everything (requires buy in from the right people obviously) and is actually quite useful. Very easy to get started and very easy for people to start creating entries.
Actually - I started out by building the bed from this website (woodgears). Youtube has a tone of good basic tutorials and this site provides basic plans (mind you - they needed some tweaking, there were errors in sizing and the twin bed we bought was actually larger than this specified).
Turned out great - except the headboard wasn't tall enough (kid bangs his head on it occasionally so re-doing that soon).
In general, just find something you want to build and build it. You will learn a LOT. Its very much like programming in that sense. You can do very simple 2d plans in openoffice draw or similar visio style tools and then buy the basics at home depot or lowes or wherever. Hand tools are ok to start but would suggest some basics like a circular saw or a portable table saw to help make things a little more straight. If you don't have any of these things then expect to spend a few hundred dollars on tools to even do something basic. You can get away with cheap tools for a project or so but if you are serious about doing this long term you are better off buying fewer higher quality things than more lower quality things as they won't last (ie dewalt over ryobi and anything from a woodshop over anything from harbor freight).
As for things I wish I'd have known when I started? Buy a good face-mask for dust protection. I had no idea how freakin toxic pine dust is. If you don't have a super high quality (read thousands of dollars) dust vac system then work in a well ventilated area (like outside) with that mask on then clean up after each session before you go inside so you don't track that junk in.
Sure - maybe the wrong forum, but the depressive sentiment that our sore thumb ideals are hammered down by the social media monster is mutually felt and quite inline with the article. No one knows exactly what it is like to be you, but many of us feel a similar desire to do more than use our best skills for the mundane - to alter the conversation is a nobel aspiration.
I too struggle with knowledge that I am bright, but that I may not be quite bright enough to be what I really want. Its a frustrating and lonely thought many of us in this field share. Expressing it though - even writing it in a public forum - is often an invite to the social monsters that prowl around here to say "then you obviously aren't that bright". Don't listen. Walk your path.
Just do your best and understand that luck and good timing means more than hard work and brilliance (ask any lotto winner). To say anything else is a like a banner ad for survivorship bias. None of us matter much in the scheme of things and all radical ideas are seen as trash to those "in the know" at some point.
I've come to terms with a lot of things I am powerless over. I've had to accept that the Anthropocene extinction is happening and most people are only vaguely aware, only a few people are willing to change their lifestyle choices. I've accepted that billions of people just want to escape poverty and live with a few of the comforts most of us take for granted. Who are we say no to them? I've accepted that in order for humanity to keep growing, everything else will keep dying little by little. I wish I was wrong but everything I am saying is supported by observable facts.
I've started to grow disillusioned with the tech industry, how different is it from Wall Street at this point? I've grown a lot as a designer, a developer, a writer, a salesman but now I'm only interested in earning an honest living, not so much to 'save the world' like I felt when I was 20. It's tempting though, I struggle with the fact that I may live and die on this world without having had much consequence on anything. Yet I'm beginning to realize that in the end, all we may leave behind as a species is a lot of plastic, crumbling buildings, cigarette butts, and toxic landfills. There is the slight chance that we expand beyond the Earth but judging from geopolitics, I'm not sure we have our priorities right at the most critical time in human history.
I'm afraid that I am too meek to swim with the sharks and in the event I do succeed, then I have to be ready for the day when someone from my past will get jealous and exaggerate something from my past to some desperate media outlet trying to get views. I would much rather buy a cabin in the mountains and grow my own food, enjoy the simple things that have always made me happy. I'm content with a camper van, working remotely, and seeing what's left of the National Parks with my camera and my dog. I'm at the point now where I don't even think I want to get married or have kids, this is where I'm at age 27.
Yes... if only there was a technology that let us communicate with investors in other places... or better yet some sort of modern flying machine that could take us there!!
As a dev here in Phx with several friends in different startups who are also programmers, I can confirm a lot of what the article says.
Next time you think of spinning up a company in silicon valley - try to remember there is likely someone else trying to build the exact same thing here and doing it with 2x the number of employees(because labor costs are less here) and an extra year worth of capitol because space is cheap.
Yes heat is tricky, but compared to the pain of failure or losing out to a better functioning competitor it seems a small price to pay.
The number one way I have obtained good freelance projects is through friends who are primarily artists. They want to do art, hate to code, and are happy to call me when they come across something bigger and more complicated than they can handle (weeding out the $40 and $100 jobs).
Also - Ansible and Docker are... neat. I see/use/talk about these a lot during the day in the big corp world. However, I've never had a freelance client need either. What they generally need is help customizing off the shelf CMS/CRM/POS systems or creating custom replacements.
They also seem to have language/platform preferences from lots of hearsay (nothing solidly informed). Being able to work in their language/platform of choice (despite if its a good choice) has helped me land a lot of work. So I'd keep boning up on your english, and learn the ins and outs of all the major programming languages .net, Java, PHP (yes PHP!), and most of the major Database systems.
I have to imagine that if you do all that and it doesn't work out at least you'll be set for another corporate gig.
About 20 years ago I saw a demo called 'Ambiance' by Tran (aka Thomas Pytel). I became so taken with it (and the very humble readme file that accompanied it) that I wanted to try my hand at creating something similar. This sent me down a similar path of learning to program first from Denthor's files, and then to a simpler technology I became fascinated by: HTML.
20 years and a successful web-app programming career later I've done some x86 demos for fun, but still haven't recreated anything as magical as that demo was to me. I owe such a debt of inspiration to all the demo crews... maybe one of these days I'll do a WebVR version of Tran's work to say thanks. 360 degree Luminati?
I wonder if these folks know how valued they are to some of us?
The plugin system isn't bad - but its a false narrative to believe you plunk this down and get some sort of valuable developer portal at an enterprise level (small biz sure - fortune 500...yeah no).
Spotify does open-source a number of their plugins, but after having looked extensively at which ones they make available and which ones we would have to write (and deal with their plugin system for) we opted out. The cost/benefit ratio is definitely there for a technical writer, but IMO its not there for serious development. (Pls - Anyone who disagrees with that - begin by telling me why you don't use Joomla as a base for all your custom applications )
Team integration at a company level is another challenge with Backstage. GitHub (the basis and sort of harvested DB for BS) is largely disconnected from company structures and AD and all the things for most companies. Yes GitHub enterprise is a thing... no in general its still not connected to company structures. There are teams in Backstage, but they are generally managed in isolation from the rest of the company which presents its own challenges and integration problems with other systems. Don't even get me started on the fact that asking everyone to put their service defintions in specific files in specific places in GitHub is no better/worse than making them enter it into a ui or spreadsheet or confluence article or anything except now its scattered in 10,000 repos - good luck getting everyone to change that.
Ultimately this isn't software that you simply install and use. Its a base that will likely require extension, and doing so means going down a one way path of adoption. Nothing it does is compatible with anything else. Is that good for Spotify - sure. Lots of folks helping build software they want to use is great. Is it good for the community? I'm not so sure. This article felt like a paid add (not suggesting it was - just saying it read like one) more than an honest plus/minus of the software and is anyone really surprised a technical writer couldn't build a proper enterprise developer portal by themselves? In other news - water is wet, the sky is blue and my kid wants to watch youtube.