You may think you want an alternative but you don't.
The API is the main drawcard of k8s in the first place, if you are off in ECS land all you are doing is wasting a bunch of time on a dead-end.
I would instead focus on getting to understand the basics of the API by using a hosted k8s service like GKE or EKS. Stick with some basic manifests, i.e deployments, services, ingress.
Once you have some stuff running you can start learning how it really works and goes together, i.e what are pods, why are pods immutable, why is a replicaset, how does a deployment orchestrate multiple replicasets, what are endpoints, what is the difference between pod readiness/liveliness.
Don't cheat yourself this early in the game, just learn things the right way from the start and save yourself a bunch of work.
I agree. I'd say the appeal of Kubernetes is the declarative configuration of your workloads. It's a language on its own that's incredibly versatile and exhaustive. This infrastructure abstraction layer is here to stay.
The API is the main drawcard of k8s in the first place, if you are off in ECS land all you are doing is wasting a bunch of time on a dead-end.
I would instead focus on getting to understand the basics of the API by using a hosted k8s service like GKE or EKS. Stick with some basic manifests, i.e deployments, services, ingress.
Once you have some stuff running you can start learning how it really works and goes together, i.e what are pods, why are pods immutable, why is a replicaset, how does a deployment orchestrate multiple replicasets, what are endpoints, what is the difference between pod readiness/liveliness.
Don't cheat yourself this early in the game, just learn things the right way from the start and save yourself a bunch of work.