Lapis the Nevrean

I have beef on the same scale as the sentiment to "fire every JavaScript developer into the sun" for projects that eschew documentation and paying technical debt in favor of hiding everything behind Docker and telling you to just run the Docker image.

Especially if it's major things like

• MySQL support is bitrotten and doesn't work anymore because they only use and document Postgres anymore, but instead of properly removing it or so much as warning not to use it, they just left it there and you'll get an obscure error that doesn't tell you what's wrong
• So many people have asked for help getting this project working on a Raspberry Pi, but instead of distributing an ARM64 Docker image, they added a FAQ entry telling you to go build it yourself

The project I'm vagueposting about is a basic bitch webapp that just needs a LAMP stack. It's honestly trivial to get working and is not so complicated that it absolutely needs to be a Docker image. It used to not be a Docker image.

Just run the Docker image, bro! All sins are hidden, and we don't have object permanence, nor own a Raspberry Pi. (I'm not even trying to run it on ARM64, I just hate this on principle.)

I have yet to run into a project where it was particularly beneficial to ship only a Docker image and no other options or documentation, but I have run into quite a few where I foolishly tried the Docker image anyway and am immediately looking at Docker developer documentation to figure out how to break into this stupid thing and get some visibility on why it doesn't Just Work like I was promised. Every time it happens, I waste less of my time by giving up sooner, and Use Something Else. (Spoiler: I have already made it all the way to "Uses Docker" → close the tab.)