Practical MLOps

Chapter 11. Building MLOps Command Line Tools and Microservices

By Alfredo Deza

The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and it at once became impossible to buy tires, clearly needed for the long trip to California. My father scoured the country for old tires for the Ford and for the small house trailer that we had used for several shorter family trips. We left Cincinnati in February 1942 with 22 tires strapped to the roofs of the trailer and the car and before we got to California we used them all.

Dr. Joseph Bogen

Building command line tools is how I got started with Python years ago, and I believe it is a perfect intersection between software development and machine learning. I remember all those years ago when I struggled to learn new Python concepts that felt very foreign to me as a Systems Administrator: functions, classes, logging, and testing. As a Systems Administrator, I was mostly exposed to shell scripting with Bash writing top-to-bottom instructions to get something done.

There are several difficulties with trying to tackle problems with shell scripting. Handling errors with straightforward reporting, logging, and debugging are all features that don’t take much effort in other languages like Python. Several other languages offer similar features like Go and Rust and should hint why using something other than a command language like Bash is a good idea. I tend to recommend using a shell scripting language when a few lines can get the task done. For example, ...