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I Stopped Trying to Learn Every DevOps Tool: And Started Building a Platform Instead

Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour on February 11, 2026

The DevOps Hero Burnout is Real Let's be real for a second. being a student and juggling school work with external studies is the TOUGEST thing ev...
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Luigi | Full Stack Web Developer

This resonates so much with me! I'm currently a beginner in Front-end development, and I sometimes feel the pressure to learn every library out there. Your post reminded me to focus on building real projects and understanding the 'why' instead of just the 'how'. Thanks for sharing your journey!

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

exactly Luigi, learning every library will just frustrate you in the long run, personally i have learned faster by building stuff, definitely the way to go. Glad you could relate :)

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Luigi | Full Stack Web Developer

Thanks for the encouragement! It's motivating to hear this from you. I'm currently working on a 3D interface project using only Vanilla JS to really grasp the basics. 'Building stuff' is definitely more fun too! Keep up the great work with your posts.

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Thank you, and best of luck!

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Mark Butterworth

Starting from the basic requirement of a project and trying to do the bare minimum to get the job done will teach a lot and show the reason the tools were created (the problem they solve). Usually when we improve something it is from where that product/tool is but this assumes the problem it solved was solved in the best way.
Only by understanding the path of problems that led to it can we truly innovate with completely new approaches.

HTMX was one of these shifts in recent years, not that I think it's better/worse. The point is that it stepped right back to the root of the problem all JS front end frameworks were trying to solve and applied what we've learned to the root problem.

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Capin Judicael Akpado • Edited

What a refreshing perspective ! We often talk about DevOps complexity, but rarely about cognitive load. As a developer, I’d much rather use a well-designed 'Golden Path' than fight with Kubernetes every morning. Your TutorCLI approach is proof that platform engineering starts by solving your own pain points

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Exactly solving problems I personally face in the beginning helps a lot in the long run

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Thank you Richard!

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A.B. Samma

I agree with the philosophy of this take. You are better off building a platform for yourself that abstracts away all this low level stuff while also providing a means of creating and maintaining golden paths that keep things consistent and secure.

Good stuff 👍🏽

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Exactly Samma, thanks for the read :)

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Charan Koppuravuri

Platform engineering wisdom. Tool fatigue is the silent DevOps killer—your "golden paths" pivot is the 2026 playbook.

Replaced Jenkins+Artifactory+PagerDuty sprawl with internal platform. Deploy time: 45min → 90s. Engineer happiness: +300%.

The math: Each tool = 15min/day context switching. 10 tools = 2.5hrs lost daily.

Building the abstraction layer > learn the 17th observability tool.

What's your "never again" tool that sparked the platform? 🚀

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FeliDrummond

I used your TutorCLI today to better understand how it works. I loved your Linux Compass because you don't need to know everything or every command about a tool in your head. You learn and record everything you learn, and then over time you create a file with various commands that you use daily and will always end up reviewing them; which makes it much easier to learn and master whatever it is.

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

I’m glad it was useful to you Feli! Yeah that was the whole point to just have a file of stuff you’ve learnt. I have some serious ADHD 😅 and as a slow learner, stuff like this helps a lot

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Joseph Christian McCoy

I love what you're saying here and as a student on cloud DevOps pathway it is very frustrating because there is just so much to learn, I am going to give your TutorCLI a try and thanks for the great article and tool! Awesome work!

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Exactly Joseph, I really do hope the tool is useful to you in some way, and thank you! :)

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Anurag Gupta • Edited

Strong take, this shift from DevOps heroics to platform thinking is exactly what we’re seeing in real-world teams scaling beyond the “human glue” phase.

Also, doesn't the lady in the cover photo look like Amber from Invincible?

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Exactly 💯

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Guilherme Zaia

Great insights on the challenges of DevOps learning paths! The idea of building a personal platform to manage complexity resonates deeply. Your TutorCLI is an excellent example of how abstraction and automation can significantly reduce cognitive load. Have you considered how this approach might evolve as more tools emerge in the ecosystem?

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

I will definitely adjust it in the future as i learn more, been thinking of evolving it to help beginners who want to get into devOps and infrastructure in general. Because of these challenges. Thanks for the read Guilherme :)

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jasoroaks

Any plans to show protégés the ropes for a fee and share experience. It has been so daunting despite attending a bootcamp.

Pathway will be appreciated Maame.

Regards

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Thanks so much for reaching out! I’m actually still a student myself , so I’m not offering paid mentorship just yet. However, you could also just join me by following the devops roadmap taking the basics step by step through my posts on here. Hope that helps :)

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Daniel Hillmann

Great stuff! Small recommendation for your project readme: use examples. Maybe even screenshots. This will provide potential users an easy way to see how great your project is and what it can do.

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Thanks for the advice Daniel! Will add that asap

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Mark Butterworth

Great content, thank you for sharing your journey. We appreciate you

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Maame Afua A. P. Fordjour

Thank you Mark for the kind words :)