I attended a tech conference for the first time last week. Over the course of two days, I learned about all sorts of dev-ops related problems being faced by different teams and was presented with their approaches to resolving them. The conference left me incredibly inspired to take a second look for things that I can automate in my own life and build solutions for them.

Why did I go?

My YouTube feed is riddled with talks from different conferences. They're my favorite videos to watch because I always find myself leaving with all sorts of new ideas learned. It's since been on my list to go and experience a conference in person; I was certain I would learn a ton.

After working with Terraform quite extensively over the summer, I became familiar with HashiCorp and their story. Founded on the open source developer tools they built to automate infrastructure (IaC), I took a real liking to them. I've always been really fascinated by tools meant for the developer, from massive game engines, or simple editor plugins. As a developer, I feel that the complexity of these tools is especially appreciated and I love how they enable others to create on top of them.

That's why I wanted to go to HashiConf. For one, it was a chance to learn about the best practices for the tools I'd recently picked up. It was also an opportunity to be introduced to some of their other products. Most excitingly, though, it was an opportunity to connect with the people developing these tools and dive into their ideas and plans for where their products will go.

Takeaways

The most direct takeaway that I have from the conference is that we are nowhere near a perfect solution to cloud management. Despite tools like Terraform having matured significantly over the past ten or so years, 52% of companies that HashiCorp surveyed still rank cloud complexity among their top three infrastructure management challenges and 73% report that their platform engineers and security team do not work in unison. Learning about how far we've come with IaC, and seeing these numbers, I couldn't help but start to imagine what might be yet to come.

Besides the products, I was also introduced to a bunch of really passionate people. Most of them were heavily focused on security and were there to learn more about Vault. They were also undertaking incredibly interesting projects of their own, from developing HSM chips to securing all of GitHub's user secrets. I left every interaction having learned something new and I feel as though my perception of what it means to be a software developer has expanded from a pinhole to a full window (and I'm sure that it will continue to expand).

Finally, I was lucky enough to run into Mitchell during the last hours of the conference. The passion that he has for the tools that he creates exudes from him, and it was impossible not to leave the conversation inspired. Despite being jetlagged and having just gone through an action-packed two days, I left the conference as energized as I've ever felt, thinking about these lessons I had learned and where I could take them next.