---
title: The Chef, the Puppet, and the Sexy IT Admin
description: Wired Enterprise covered the rivalry between Chef and Puppet as infrastructure automation went mainstream, placing Jesse Robbins and Opscode at the center of the industry's shift to infrastructure as code.
doc_version: "1.0"
last_updated: 2011-10-26
slug: chef-and-puppet-wired-enterprise
outlet: Wired
author: Cade Metz
date: 2011-10-26
url: https://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2011/10/chef_and_puppet/
type: Article
excerpt: Wired Enterprise covered the rivalry between Chef and Puppet as infrastructure automation went mainstream, placing Jesse Robbins and Opscode at the center of the industry's shift to infrastructure as code.
tags:
  - Jesse Robbins
  - Wired
  - Chef
  - Puppet
  - Opscode
  - Infrastructure as Code
  - Configuration Management
  - DevOps
---

Cade Metz wrote about the rivalry between Chef and Puppet for Wired Enterprise in 2011. Mainstream tech press covering configuration management was new. For years the only people who cared about infrastructure automation were the ones carrying pagers.

Adam Jacob, Barry Steinglass, Nathan Haneysmith, and I cofounded Chef to bring the automation Google and Amazon kept as closely guarded secrets to everyone else. Chef let engineering teams define infrastructure as code, writing recipes to configure entire fleets of servers instead of managing them by hand. Puppet was working the same problem with a different philosophy, and the comparison became a running storyline as the category grew.

This piece marks the moment infrastructure as code stopped being an insider practice and became an industry. When Wired compares your configuration tool to your rival's, the category has arrived.

## Also Mentioned

- [Wired](https://www.wired.com) (company)
- [Chef Software](https://www.chef.io) (company)
- [Puppet](https://www.puppet.com) (company)
- Cade Metz (person)

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