houk got most of the answer. The other answer is that ops, unlike dev, still gets to do things the fast way if it makes sense. So if it's faster to hit up and enter a bunch of times? Do it. Dev doesn't get to make that decision most of the time these days, and that's just sad and completely against the spirit of hacking.

There's hacking, and then there's polish. You can't make a product out of a hack. Though some companies offer Hack Days to get things going.

there's more to ops than just deploying. it's about running a smooth environment from end to end. automation gets you 90% there and give you the time to focus on that much more involved 10%.

Fair enough.

What do you think about Anderseen's "Software Eating the World?" Wouldn't it make sense that at some point in the future, "running a smooth environment" gets eaten by software too?