Welcome

Thank you for purchasing early access (MEAP) to read Knative in Action.

In a time of ambition, Knative stands out as ambitious. Kubernetes is a phenomenon, an amazingly powerful tool and community that has swept all before it. But not without its challenges for mortals such as I and perhaps you.

What if, Knative sets out to ask, it were possible to tap the power of Kubernetes without needing a PhD in Kubernetics?

It is in light of this question that I begin by assuming that you have never used Kubernetes, nor any other system which has unfurled the "SERVERLESS!!" banner above its doorway. I assume, basically, that you have coded at all. Most likely on some system that receives requests over HTTP. Otherwise I don’t need you to have much exotic know-how as prerequisites.

This will be a narrow path for us to take. Some of what I will teach you is purely Knative. Some of what I will teach you will be Knative’s exposure of Kubernetes primitives. And some of what I will teach you will be the amount of Kubernetes concepts necessary to understand Knative’s architecture. I want mostly to teach you Knative chemistry, but that will require some excursions into Kubernetes physics. I will be careful to keep these lines as clear as I can going along.