We’ve failed.
Setting up a new product or service should not be complicated. Many have been focusing on improved user experiences for the past several years in tech, so these are lessons that we’ve collectively learned. Except … we haven’t.
This past week I was attempting to set up a new project hosted with Digital Ocean. I knew that’s where the servers would run (thanks to zero cost for the DOKS control plane). But I wanted to ensure I was hosting my CI/CD pipelines, container images, and even project code in an environment as close to the running servers as possible.
Does Digital Ocean offer a code hosting tool similar to AWS’ CodeCommit? A quick search yielded a Git Hosting solution that sounded promising.
All of the Hype, None of the Functionality
The sales page sounds like everything I need:
- A user-friendly interface
- Automatic scaling down of infrastructure
- Priiate repositories
- Automated backups
I was excited! This is exactly what I need!
Or so I thought …
Scrolling down, the tutorials are all about installing git itself on a server, not configuring a tool. Even the link regarding private repositories takes you not to a set of instructions, but to an unanswered question in a community forum regarding deploying from a private (external) GitHub repository.
In short: Digital Ocean does not have a Git Hosting product. They merely provide servers that a savvy developer can use to flesh out their own git hosting approach.
We’ve Failed
Part of me wonders whether or not this solutions page was written by an LLM. It presents information that sounds reasonable but is ultimately proven to be inaccurate – just like an LLM hallucination.
Between sales pages like this that attempt to promote a product that doesn’t actually exist and search summaries suggesting you add glue to pizza sauce to help cheese from sliding off, modern technology is fairly stupid. Which is depressing since people like me have spent their careers trying to make the world a smarter place.
Sadly, we’ve failed in that endeavor. We’re not facing death at the hands of Skynet but of a robotic Gomer Pyle.