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Programming

Modern platform engineering and DevOps work increasingly involves writing and maintaining code — automation scripts, CLI tools, operators, and infrastructure tooling.

This section covers programming languages and toolchains commonly used in cloud-native environments, with a focus on installation, setup, and operational use.

Scope

The Programming section covers:

  • Language installation and version management
  • Toolchain setup on Linux
  • Build and dependency workflows
  • Environment reproducibility

Languages

Go

Go is the primary language of the cloud-native ecosystem.

Kubernetes, Docker, Terraform, Helm, and most cloud-native tooling are written in Go.

For platform engineers, knowing Go means you can:

  • Read and understand upstream tooling source
  • Write Kubernetes operators and controllers
  • Build custom CLI tools and automation
  • Contribute to the ecosystem

Guiding Principle

Toolchains should be:

  • Pinned to a specific version
  • Reproducible across machines
  • Easy to upgrade without breaking system state

Avoid relying on package manager versions for languages — they are frequently outdated and inconsistently maintained across distributions.