Nitric CEO Steve Demchuk and his co-founders were frustrated with the constraints of regulated environments while building high-end frontends for banks. Today, their platform is flipping the script on cloud infrastructure by automating infrastructure creation based on app code.
The traditional approach to infrastructure as code (IaC) requires developers to write application logic in one codebase and infrastructure specifications in another, creating friction and slowing development. Nitric’s approach is different. The platform examines application code and automatically generates necessary infrastructure specifications, eliminating the need for developers to become infrastructure experts.
Demchuk said the inspiration came from users themselves, who wanted a faster way to write app code without having to deal with infrastructure. Nitric’s founders built a tool that lets developers write application code and leaves it to the platform to infer requirements and automate infrastructure creation. This approach results in “infrastructure from code” – a paradigm shift that eliminates the traditional separation between application development and infrastructure management.
The Nitric framework abstracts common cloud application elements across multiple languages and cloud providers, allowing developers to write in their preferred language while the platform handles translation to IaC providers like Terraform, Pulumi, or AWS CDK.
AI-powered software is changing the game by rapidly generating application logic. However, there’s still a need for platform teams to maintain oversight when infrastructure generation becomes automated. Demchuk argued that this concern is misplaced, as Nitric enforces consistent governance while allowing developers to leverage AI for rapid deployment.
The platform ensures that security, provisioning, and architectural decisions are consistently applied while AI handles coding work to create proper deployments. This workflow benefits from automation layered on top of automation, with each tool handling what it does best.
For engineering leaders grappling with modern cloud development complexity, Nitric’s approach offers a glimpse into the evolving relationship between developers, platform teams, and infrastructure in the age of AI-powered software.
Source: https://thenewstack.io/the-ai-code-generation-problem-nobodys-talking-about