A magazine about programmers, code, and society. Written by and for humans since 2018.
January 5th, 2026
Welcome to the 88th issue of De Programmatica Ipsum, about Containers. In this edition, we realize that an Internet meme encapsulated the whole truth about containers all along; in our Vidéothèque section, we watch the introduction of Docker by Solomon Hykes in 2013; and in the Library section, we review "The Docker Book" by James Turnbull.
by Adrian Kosmaczewski
The analogy between intermodal containers and software containers sounds cliché, but it works pretty well, which is the reason why we will keep using it in this article. Let us recap: before the standardization around intermodal containers after the Second World War, freight had to be manually loaded and unloaded from boats to trains to trucks, over and over again. Before the rise of software containers of the 2010s, software had to be manually loaded and unloaded from developer laptops to test environments to cloud systems, over and over again.
Around 2004 I was working as a .NET software developer, building custom applications for a rather large Swiss customer who shall remain nameless. As part of the engagement, we had to not only write said software application following their requirements, but also deliver it in person. Yes, in person. We had to take a snapshot of the source code of the application (stored in a Visual SourceSafe repository, please do not laugh too loud), save it in a USB thumb drive, and drive to the location, where we would explain the deployment team how to build and deploy it.
It is easy to forget, in our age of AI and LLMs and slop and coding agents, that merely 10 years ago the "cloud" and "DevOps" and "containers" were all the rage. It seems like a century ago, yet it was not only during the 21st century, but it was almost yesterday. The sensation that time is flying is not anymore a privilege for the people above 40 years old.
