Docker Captain Take 5 – Lucas Santos

Docker Captains are select members of the community that are both experts in their field and are passionate about sharing their Docker knowledge with others. “Docker Captains Take 5” is a regular blog series where we get a closer look at our Captains and ask them the same broad set of questions ranging from what their best Docker tip is to whether they prefer cats or dogs (personally, we like whales and turtles over here). Today, we’re interviewing Lucas Santos who has been a Docker Captain since 2021. He is a Cloud Advocate at Microsoft and is based in São Paulo, Brazil.

How/when did you first discover Docker?

My first contact with Docker was in 2015 when I worked at a logistics company. Docker made it very easy to deploy applications in customer’s infrastructure. Every customer had a different need and a different architecture that needed to be taken into account, unfortunately I had to leave the company before I could make this real. So I took that knowledge to my next company where we deployed over 100 microservices using Docker images and Docker infrastructure.

What is your favorite Docker command?

I would say it’s “pull”. Because it makes it look as if images are incredibly simple things. However, there’s a whole system behind image pulling and, despite being simple to understand, a simple image pull contains a lot of steps and a lot of aggregated knowledge about containers, filesystems and so much more. And this is all transparent to the user as if it’s magic.

What is your top tip you think other people don’t know for working with Docker?

Some people, especially those who are not familiar with containers, think Docker is just a fancy word for a VM. My top tip for everyone that is working with Docker as a fancy VM, don’t. Docker containers can do so much more than just run simple processes and act as a simple VM. There’s so much we can do using containers and Docker images it’s an endless world.

What’s the coolest Docker demo you have done/seen ?

I think I don’t have a favorite, but one that really stuck with me all those years was one of the first demos I’ve seen with Docker back in 2016 or 2017. I won’t remember who was the speaker or where I was but it stuck with me because it was the first time I was seeing someone using CI with Docker. In this demo, the speaker not only created images on demand using a Docker container, but also spinned up several other containers, one for each part of the pipeline. I had never seen something like that before at that time.

What have you worked on in the past 6 months that you’re particularly proud of?

I’m proud of my work with my blog and even prouder of my work in the KEDA HTTP Add-On (https://github.com/kedacore/http-add-on) team. We’ve developed a way to scale applications in a Kubernetes cluster using KEDA native scalers. One of the things that I’m proudest is of the DockerCon community room for the Brazilian community, we had an amazing engagement and this was one of the most amazing events I’ve ever helped to organize.

What do you anticipate will be Docker’s biggest announcement this year?

This is a tricky question. I really don’t know what to hope for, technology moves so fast that I literally hope for anything.

What do you think is going to be Docker’s biggest challenge this year?

I think one of the biggest challenges Docker is going to face this year is to reinvent itself and reposition the company in the eyes of the developers.

What are some personal goals for the next year with respect to the Docker community ?

One of my main goals is to close the gap between the people who are still beginners in containers, and those who are experts because there is too little documentation about it. Along with that I plan to make the Brazilian community more aware of container technologies. I can say that my main goal this year is to make everyone understand what a Docker container is, deep down.

What talk would you most love to see at DockerCon 2021?

I’d love to see more Docker integration with the cloud and new ways to use containers in the cloud.

Looking to the distant future, what is the technology that you’re most excited about and that you think holds a lot of promise?

I think one of the technologies that I’m most excited about is the future of containers. They evolve so fast that I’m anxious to see what it’ll hold next. Especially in the security field, where I feel there are a lot of things we are yet to see.

Rapid fire questions…

What new skill have you mastered during the pandemic?

Patience, probably. I started to learn IoT, Electronics, Photography, Music and a lot of other things.

Cats or Dogs?

Cats

Salty, sour or sweet?

Salty

Beach or mountains?

Mountains

Your most often used emoji?

 🧐