<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="4.4.1">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://focalplane.dev/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://focalplane.dev/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2026-08-04T19:58:05+00:00</updated><id>https://focalplane.dev/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Focal Plane</title><subtitle>Platform and DevOps consulting. Twenty years building the infrastructure other engineers ship on. Gerard Ceraso, principal.</subtitle><author><name>Gerard Ceraso</name><email>gerard@focalplane.dev</email></author><entry><title type="html">Nothing exists in production without being declared in code</title><link href="https://focalplane.dev/writing/declared-in-code/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Nothing exists in production without being declared in code" /><published>2026-08-04T00:00:00+00:00</published><updated>2026-08-04T00:00:00+00:00</updated><id>https://focalplane.dev/writing/declared-in-code</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://focalplane.dev/writing/declared-in-code/"><![CDATA[<p>Most of the infrastructure problems I get called about are not really
infrastructure problems. They are memory problems. Somebody made a change by
hand eighteen months ago, it worked, and nobody wrote it down.</p>

<p>The fix is not a tool. It is a rule: if it is not in the repository, it does not
exist in production. Everything else — Terraform, GitOps, the review process —
is just how you keep that rule honest.</p>

<p>This is a sample post so the blog plumbing is wired and working. Delete it when
you publish something real.</p>]]></content><author><name>Gerard Ceraso</name><email>gerard@focalplane.dev</email></author><summary type="html"><![CDATA[Most of the infrastructure problems I get called about are not really infrastructure problems. They are memory problems. Somebody made a change by hand eighteen months ago, it worked, and nobody wrote it down.]]></summary></entry></feed>