For World Emoji Day, we translated the highs, lows, and sheer chaos of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) — one emoji at a time. The result? The first DevOps Emoji Glossary, built for anyone who's wrestled with IaC drift, broken pipelines, or unpredictable automation.
From Terraform maps to ClickOps nightmares, this glossary turns real infrastructure problems into emoji form — because sometimes, the cloud really is too messy for words. 🧱🔥😵
🚀 Bonus: If you're a DevOps Manager, SRE, or part of a DevSecOps team — this one's for you.
🧱 Terraform & IaC Concepts
terraform init — 🧱🔨🧰
Getting the toolbox ready. First step of the chaos.
👉 Terraform AWS Provider Guide
terraform plan — 🧠📜🤔
Thinking hard about what to break next.
terraform apply — 🚀🔁🏗️
Apply complete. Consequences pending.
terraform destroy — 🟪☠️🔥🗑️
Hope you saved a backup… oh wait.
👉 Terraform Destroy — Video Guide
Migrating to OpenTofu — 🟪➡️🟨
Same syntax. More freedom.
- Migrating to OpenTofu from Terraform
- Step by step: (link to ControlMonkey's guide — add once published)
terraform refresh — 🟪🚿☁️
Refresh updates your state file with reality. Sometimes comforting. Sometimes... surprise drift.
Terraform Maps — 🗺️🔢📦
Define key-value pairs — until someone tries to flatten them inside a loop.
👉 Terraform Maps — How to Use Them Smartly
Terraform List — 🟪📋
Lists are great for subnet IDs. Less great when you lose count.
👉 Using Terraform List — Guide
Drift — 😵🌀🙈
Infra doing its own thing. Again.
👉 The Definitive Guide to Terraform Drift Detection
ClickOps — 🖱️🚨☁️🤯
Manual changes: fast now, pain forever.
👉 What is ClickOps & How to Handle It
IaC Risk Index — ⚠️📉🔐
IaC gives you power — but with power comes misconfigs, exposure, and missing guardrails.
🚀 DevOps, SRE & Cloud Topics
GitOps — 🤖📥📦
Manage infra through PRs and Git workflows. Great until someone force-pushes to main.
FinOps — 💸📊🧮
Where cloud cost meets chaos.
DevOps — 🧱🔧🚀
Dev + Ops = Speed... and sometimes fragility.
DevSecOps — 🔐🧪⚙️
Security built-in, not bolted on.
DevOps Manager — 🧠📈🛠️
Leader. Fire-fighter. Automation evangelist. If you’ve ever shouted “who clicked that?!” — you might be one.
👉 How to Become a DevOps Director
SRE Manager — ⏱️💡🔧
Balancing incidents, SLAs, scaling... all with a Slack tab open.
👉 How to Become an SRE Manager
Cloud Disaster Recovery — ☁️💾♻️
Not just snapshots — it’s your config, state, and sanity.
💬 Your Turn
What emoji would you add to this glossary? Drop your favorite DevOps emoji + explanation in the comments! 👇
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