(Context: One of my college asked me about the Helm charts vs. Operators. And this was my answer)
Good question and I am very opinionated about this. I am not sure if I am right, but this is my personal view:
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Kubernetes itself is hihghliy flexible (and this is the biggest power of it). The API can handle any resource types, everything is generic inside.
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But it's not solved how the k8s yaml files should be effectively managed to release/deploy/operate applications.
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One approach is Helm chart: using templates to generate the k8s resources files and install them with a server side component.