Chapter Two · Part 1: Why DevOps Exists
Automation
Chapter 1 named the tension between building and running software. This chapter introduces the single move that eases it more than any other: doing work once, so a machine can repeat it, instead of doing it by hand every time.
Sam used to deploy Pageturn the slow way: copy the files, restart the server, check a long list of steps by hand, and hope he didn't forget one at midnight. It worked, mostly. But it was slow, it varied from one time to the next, and a tired person skips a step. Almost everything in DevOps is a way to stop doing that.
Three short topics build the idea. First, the difference between doing work by hand and having a machine do it. Then the word for chained automated steps — a pipeline — which becomes the backbone of half the course. And finally the honest accounting: what automation actually buys you, and the upfront cost it asks for first.