Docker
Docker takes away repetitive, mundane configuration tasks and is used throughout the development lifecycle for fast, easy and portable application development - desktop and cloud. Docker’s comprehensive end to end platform includes UIs, CLIs, APIs and security that are engineered to work together across the entire application delivery lifecycle. - docker.com
Use
We use docker for many reasons but in this modules it comes handy especially for the following areas:
- Sharing code between different operating systems becomes easy, docker unifies the platforms
- Deploying code to Azure
- Running tests against test-containers (ref follows)
- Abstract and simplify versioning
- Keeping our development machines clear from clutter
- Consistency, docker containers are always the same, there is not suddenly a new version or variable in them
There are only a handful of cloud providers or hosters where you can appear without a docker image and serve it - even those where you do not bring a container will under the hood containerize it. It is therefor high time to start using it!
Install / Get started
This is not the first time you meet docker as you can see in the expectations. I think the course is completable without docker but it will be 😖
If, still so, get started right now!
Alternative
There are not too many viable alternatives because even docker itself, under the hood, uses containerd.