Mark C Allen

Everyday DevOps www.markcallen.com Did I Break the Internet 🚨 Thursday, I deployed core-api 😅 Two minutes later, Google declared a global incident. Did I break the internet? Highly unlikely. Was the timing suspicious? Absolutely. But let this be your friendly reminder: Correlation does not equal causation. If you have ever hit deploy and immediately wondered if you broke something. This one’s for you. Read Devpod on DigitalOcean Sometimes, your local development environment is doing too much...

Everyday DevOps www.markcallen.com My Viral LinkedIn Post on Easy Dev Environments Last week, I shared a LinkedIn post about the all-too-familiar pain of setting up local development environments. To my surprise, it struck a nerve. Thousands of reactions and hundreds of comments poured in from developers and DevOps pros worldwide. Why did it resonate? Because it highlighted a universal frustration: messy configurations, broken READMEs, and undocumented “tribal knowledge” that slows everyone...

Everyday DevOps www.markcallen.com The Value of an Easy-to-Use Dev Environment Spinning up a local dev environment shouldn’t feel like trying to launch a rocket with duct tape and hope. If it takes more than five minutes or, worse, requires tracking down Dave from QA, who “just knows how it works,” you’ve already lost. All I want is to clone the repo, run a command or two, and feel like a productivity god. One setup script rules them all: it wires up your config, fires up the stack, and makes...

Everyday DevOps www.markcallen.com Explaining technical things to non-technical people: the interview question When explaining complex technical concepts to non-technical people—especially in interviews—I focus on empathy, simplicity, and storytelling to make ideas accessible without losing their depth. I draw from personal experience to show how aligning with the audience’s perspective improves understanding and highlights the ability to communicate technical expertise in a clear and...

Everyday DevOps www.markcallen.com Is it vibe coding if I know what I’m doing? While AI tools like Chatgpt are transforming development workflows, their actual value is realized only when paired with solid expertise. This article highlights how informed developers can leverage AI to enhance productivity, demonstrating that understanding the fundamentals remains essential, even in an era of generative coding. Read Tips & Tricks for the week Static analysis is a key component of CI/CD, and that...