Introducing the Technology Matrix

I’m tired. Genuinely exhausted. Navigating the Cloud Native landscape has become absolutely maddening. We’ve all seen the Always Sunny meme, and honestly? It hits harder every year.

The CNCF Landscape lists hundreds of projects. Hundreds. New tools pop up every week. Every conference brings another dozen “game-changers.” And somehow, you’re supposed to figure out what actually matters for your platform while also, you know, doing your actual job.

I’ve spent years drowning in this chaos. Evaluating tools. Getting burned by hype. Watching projects I loved die slow deaths. And I kept thinking: there has to be a better way to track all this. To share what I’ve actually learned. So I built one.

Welcome to the Technology Matrix.

What is the Technology Matrix?

The Technology Matrix is not another list. I’m so sick of lists. It’s my personal, opinionated tech radar. A living map of how I actually navigate this mess of an ecosystem. Every technology in here has a story. When I first touched it. Why I rate it the way I do. Where I think it’s going (and sometimes, where I think it deserves to go).

Think of it as the CNCF Landscape if someone actually had opinions. If someone would just tell you “yeah, I used this in production and it was a nightmare” instead of neutral marketing speak.

Today I’m releasing the first iteration. It’s rough around the edges. I know. But the core is there, and I’ll keep adding spicier takes and better features as I go.

The Pipeline: A Journey Through Technology

Here’s the thing that frustrated me about every tech radar I’ve seen: they just label stuff “adopt” or “hold” like technology decisions are binary. They’re not. My relationship with tools changes over time. Sometimes dramatically.

So at the heart of the Matrix is what I call the Pipeline. Seven stages that represent where I actually am with each technology:

Stage	What It Means
Skip	Not for me right now. Maybe it doesn’t fit my use cases, maybe I tried it and walked away. No hard feelings.
Watch	On my radar. I’m paying attention, reading release notes, lurking in the Discord.
Explore	Worth a look. I’m actually trying this out, running tutorials, kicking the tires.
Learn	I’m investing real time here. This technology earned my attention and I’m going deep.
Adopt	Production-ready in my head. I’d confidently use this on a real project tomorrow.
Advocate	I’m not just using it, I’m actively telling people about it. I believe in this one.
Graveyard	The end of the road. Deprecated, abandoned, or it burned me badly enough that I’m done. Rest in peace.

Things move through this pipeline. Something in “Watch” today might be in “Adopt” next month. Or it might crater into the Graveyard. I’ve seen both happen more times than I can count. The Matrix captures that journey, and I’ll annotate it with my thoughts as things evolve.

The Story Behind Each Tech

Click on any technology and you get the full picture. This is where it gets personal:

Why: My actual rationale for the rating. Not marketing copy. Real opinions from real experience, including the painful parts.
Spicy Takes 🌶️: The hot opinions. Things I might not say on a conference stage but you deserve to know.
Makes Me Feel: An emoji reaction. Sometimes you just need to know the vibe, you know?
First Used / Last Used: When did I actually start using this? Have I been running Kubernetes since 2016 or did I just discover this project last month? Context matters.

This metadata turns a list into a story. You’re not just seeing what I think. You’re seeing why I think it, how I got here, and how that opinion has changed over the years.

Advanced Explorer

For the folks who want to really dig in, the Advanced Explorer is where things get interesting:

Filter by Anything: Pipeline stage, CNCF status, trajectory, confidence. Slice it however makes sense for you.
Multiple Views: See technologies as a grid by category, or explore other ways to organize the chaos.
Preset Views: Quick configs like “Pipeline View” (my journey) or “CNCF Maturity” (project lifecycle).
Shareable URLs: Found a useful filter combination? The URL updates as you explore. Share your exact view.

The Advanced Explorer turns the Matrix from something you browse into something you interrogate. Ask it hard questions.

Deep Content Integration

The Matrix isn’t a standalone database. It’s wired into everything I create at Rawkode Academy.

Every technology links to its dedicated page:

Deep-dive Videos: Tutorials, “Show & Tell” sessions, and “Klustered” episodes where I actually use the tool.
Articles & Guides: Written content to help you understand the concepts and trade-offs.
Related Technologies: See how tools fit together in the broader stack.

If I’ve covered it, you’ll find it. The Matrix is your index into the content library.

What’s Coming

What you see today is Phase 1. Here’s what’s on my roadmap:

Phase 2: New Perspectives

Scatter Plot View: A proper “Tech Radar” visualization. Plot technologies by stage vs trajectory to see where momentum is actually building.
Timeline View: See my journey chronologically. When did I adopt Kubernetes? When did I finally give up on Docker Swarm? The timeline tells the story.

Phase 3: Deep Exploration

Treemap View: Drill down through categories hierarchically. See how the ecosystem is weighted at a glance.
Sankey Diagrams: Visualize the flow of technologies through pipeline stages over time. Watch the ecosystem evolve.

The Matrix will grow as the ecosystem grows. New views, new filters, new ways to make sense of the noise.

Why I Built It

Look, I built this because I was frustrated. As someone who constantly evaluates tools, creates content, and advises teams on platform choices, I needed somewhere to put all of this. A structured way to capture what I know and share it without the corporate filter.

The CNCF Landscape is comprehensive. I respect the work. But it’s deliberately neutral. It won’t tell you what’s worth your time and what’s a waste of it. I needed something opinionated. Something that says “I deployed this in production and here’s the truth.”

My goal is simple: help you make better technology decisions by sharing my perspective honestly. Not as gospel. Not as the definitive answer. Just as one data point from someone who’s been doing this for a while and has the scars to prove it.

Start Exploring

The Technology Matrix is live. Go poke around.

Visit the Matrix: See the full pipeline view with every technology I track.
Try the Advanced Explorer: Filter, slice, and interrogate the data your way.

This is a living document. Technologies will move through the pipeline. New projects will appear. My opinions will change. That’s the whole point. The Matrix captures the journey, not a frozen snapshot.

Dive in. Disagree with me. Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me what I’m missing. Let’s figure this out together.

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