In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings demand the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything from a supercomputer specifically built for this purpose. This computer, ‘Deep Thought’, calculates the answer ‘42’ after 7.5 million years. Deep Thought then points out the answer is meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was.

Towards the end of Life, the universe and everything, the characters discover a witness in a courtroom. In the story, this witness had told ‘all truth’ after overdosing on a truth drug, horrifying all involved to the extent that they abandon the case and seal the court with the witness inside. The witness has told all the truth in existence, but has forgotten the details and kept no record. The only information he can provide is that the ‘Ultimate Question’ and ‘Ultimate Answer’ can never both be known in the same universe.

The truth of DevOps has been discovered over and over but truth is not always easy to accept. We too often reduce the truth to an answer without understanding. We have collectively forgotten the details and kept poor records. Join in this whimsical journey through history in search of DevOps ultimate question.