from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why was Docker first launched at PyCon?

by galenmarchetti on 9/14/23, 11:59 PM with 5 comments

Solomon Hykes famously launched Docker in 2013 at PyCon with this talk (amazing 5 minute watch if you haven't seen it yet): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW9CAH9nSLs&ab_channel=dotcloudtv

As someone who wasn't involved in the industry at this space, it's curious to me that PyCon was the place for Docker to launch, given the talk seems to have nothing to do with python / docker itself doesn't seem to have anything to do with python specifically (although of course python devs use docker a lot nowadays).

Anyone remember this / have insights into why PyCon was the launch site for Docker?

  • by theli0nheart on 9/15/23, 12:23 PM

    I was in the audience and was a heavy Python user at the time.

    As another commenter mentioned, this was during a round of several lightning talks. These talks generally can be about pretty much anything. I don't remember the others, but I definitely remembered this one.

    At the time, dotCloud had oriented itself as a PaaS that also had first-class support for Python (Heroku was still very Ruby/Rails-focused), so it makes sense that they'd want to show off what they were building at a conference with Python developers.

  • by toomuchtodo on 9/15/23, 12:15 AM

    > Founded as DotCloud in 2008 by Solomon Hykes in Paris, what we now know as Docker started out as a platform as a service (PaaS) before pivoting in 2013 to focus on democratizing the underlying software containers its platform was running on.

    > Hykes first demoed Docker at PyCon in March 2013, where he explained that Docker was created because developers kept asking for the underlying technology powering the DotCloud platform. “We did always think it would be cool to be able to say, ‘Yes, here is our low-level piece. Now you can do Linux containers with us and go do whatever you want, go build your platform.’ So that’s what we are doing.”

    https://www.infoworld.com/article/3204171/what-is-docker-the...

  • by glaucon on 9/15/23, 3:32 AM

    Well it was a Lightning talk which, at least at those pycons I have attended, can be about anything the speaker wishes to talk about. Perhaps dotCloud had significant mind share amongst Python users ? I don't have any recollection of that but it's possibly another reason.

  • by yen223 on 9/15/23, 3:48 AM

    1. Python was and still is popular

    2. Docker solved a lot of problems related to Python's deployment story.