Internal developer platforms were meant to pave golden paths, but often lead platform engineers into a tangled web of YAML and bash scripts. The true “Darth Vader” moments in platform engineering come when good intentions go bad, developer experience is sidelined, and open source tools unintentionally become the villains of velocity.

This talk compares key OSS tools and cloud-native strategies shaping platform engineering today. We’ll explore how to reinforce the Jedi discipline of paved paths or descend into spaghetti-pipeline chaos trying to deliver software the right way.

Whether you're building a platform team or evaluating tools, this session will help you grasp what “golden path” really means and how to choose the right toolset based not only on features, but also on cognitive load.

Learn from anti-patterns and real-world implementation pitfalls as we explore both the dark and light sides of OSS platform engineering—and uncover who the true Darth Vader of your stack might be.