Only if one's view of the world is very constrained.
And yet, are there any other generalized cyber control systems even remotely usable to manage arbitrarily shaped workloads other than kubernetes (which isn’t that either, not yet)?
Why not?
Taking that hypothesis you have on kubernetes, check this out...
The Cybernetic Hypothesis book discusses a philosophical/systems-thinking/governance obsession with the importance of "steering" or "piloting." Foucault taught a class on in it in the 80's prior to his death. The train of logic is interest in steering all systems that could be steered for <various reasons> led to a natural interest in cybernetics, as the automation offered a way to codify or "steer" this systems.
Kubernetes <- derived from the greek "kubernesis," "the action of piloting a vessel."
You're highlighting, I think to the extent I'm still grokking this all myself, a common counterpoint to cybernetic thinking - it offers a way to steer things, but often doesn't address core questions like "well who is steering this, why do we want to steer this, what other answer is there beyond efficiency for efficiency's sake?"
why though do you take a jab at declaration as being a worse model - it seems like a valid implementation of the general operator idea.
A bit off topic, but in the ‘science of automatic control systems’ sense -- one could argue today it could be pronounced ‘kubernetes’.
But imagine the consternation when we first collectively realized k8s had no cybernetics, no auto-governance (another related word*) of tech running on it. This is why a few of us met with CoreOS in the mid-2010s to talk about the idea that would turn into Operators: put the cybernetics back in kubernetes.
Disappointed even today that so much mindshare and effort is around standing up and running k8s itself, or ‘declaring’ what runs in it (tbc, this part is good), and much less on ‘Operators’ so k8s could run your SaaS for you (which would be better).
The original public introduction of the concept:
- Brandon Philips @ CoreOS, Nov 2016: https://web.archive.org/web/20170129131616/http://coreos.com...
A more recent take:
- RedHat, 2020: https://www.redhat.com/sysadmin/kubernetes-operators
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* Note: “The word ‘governance’ came from the Latin verb ‘gubernare’, or more originally from the Greek word ‘kubernaein’, which means ‘to steer’. Basing on its etymology, governance refers to the manner of steering or governing, or of directing and controlling.”