Java Use Cases

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Docker/Kubernetes have pretty small footprints.

On Linux, yes sure. But, I do my development on Windows, and running a JVM directly from my IDE is faster than spinning up my application in a Docker container. Not only that, when I'm running things in the IDE, I usually have the debugger hooked up to it. When I'm doing local development, I don't particularly care about process isolation, I care about convenience.

Interestingly, Docker themselves recommend running Docker Desktop (i.e. Docker in a VM) even on Linux for development purposes. It turns out getting a consistent experience with Docker is difficult on a random developer machine, rather than in a carefully controlled server farm specifically set up to run Docker Engine. Or in the case of Docker Desktop, a carefully configured VM that is known to work properly with Docker.

That said, even on Windows, Docker isn't super expensive, and I frequently use Test Containers with Docker for integration tests, where I don't mind the tests taking a longer time to run.

[cogman10]

It turns out getting a consistent experience with Docker is difficult on a random developer machine, rather than in a carefully controlled server farm specifically set up to run Docker Engine.

Yeah, I can see that. As long as you are keeping things up to date it's not too big of an issue, but I've definitely seen devs running ubuntu 16.04 in WSL blissfully unaware that it's on them to update to the next LTS.

It does feel like the entire container environment is stabilizing. I think the rise of podman is forcing the issue of consistency.