Maybe the question is really "why do some companies build a new in-house technology rather than use an existing one"?
1. Some companies are so slow and some teams so agile that creating a new working project takes less time than submitting a ticket for permission to install and demo software and get the required permission to purchase it.
2. Developers hate to deal with salespeople, so unless the CICD platform is OpenSource / free the developer might choose to build something simple.
3. Developers might be unaware that a solution exists to solve their specific problem.
4. The commercial solution to a small developer's problem might be too expensive.
The developer estimates of time and money for building something in-house often neglect the "hidden costs" ... (including the long tail). The hidden costs often include :
1. opportunity costs - a developer can't do two things at once, so if they are writing a tool, they are not releasing new features or fixing defects.
2. Maintenance costs - keeping the thing running (when the host OS is upgraded, the network changes, the repository credentials expire, etc)
3. support costs - if this touches any other outside teams or customers, someone will have issues and need support. Maybe a new team has to be created to handle the Zendesk support tickets, provide Slack help, etc.
I was around when UML took off - but the only real success I have seen from automatically generating code (from diagrams or otherwise) has been in the API space recently since those contracts are easy to describe and generate with tools like Swagger
There are tons of systems that setup environments on-demand (EaaS) to facilitate "pre-merge" tests. Im sure your problem can be solved without building it all yourself.
Also noteworthy: Slack is going to explain this in more depth next month:
(disclaimer: I work for a Bunnyshell) Honestly the most benefit would be gained from making Kubernetes invisible and speeding up your development process. Tools exist now to deploy short lived preview environments into your cluster for every PR. This is where the Kubernetes values sits. The whole “shift left” idea. Test before merge / identical short lived environments, etc.
1. Some companies are so slow and some teams so agile that creating a new working project takes less time than submitting a ticket for permission to install and demo software and get the required permission to purchase it. 2. Developers hate to deal with salespeople, so unless the CICD platform is OpenSource / free the developer might choose to build something simple. 3. Developers might be unaware that a solution exists to solve their specific problem. 4. The commercial solution to a small developer's problem might be too expensive.
The developer estimates of time and money for building something in-house often neglect the "hidden costs" ... (including the long tail). The hidden costs often include : 1. opportunity costs - a developer can't do two things at once, so if they are writing a tool, they are not releasing new features or fixing defects. 2. Maintenance costs - keeping the thing running (when the host OS is upgraded, the network changes, the repository credentials expire, etc) 3. support costs - if this touches any other outside teams or customers, someone will have issues and need support. Maybe a new team has to be created to handle the Zendesk support tickets, provide Slack help, etc.