On Tue, July 15, 2014 11:01, Les Mikesell wrote:
> On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 11:50 PM, Keith Keller
> <kkeller@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>>
>>> 1. See the systemd myths web page
>>> http://0pointer.de/blog/projects/the-biggest-myths.html
>>
>> In the interest of full disclosure, that page is written by one of the
>> primary authors of systemd, so we shouldn't expect an unbiased opinion.
>> (Not saying it's wrong, only that it's important to understand the
>> perspective an author might have.)
>
> One thing that bothers me very much when reading that is the several
> mentions of how you don't need to learn shell syntax as though that is
> an advantage or as if the author didn't already know and use it
> already. As if he didn't understand that _every command you type at
> the command line_ is shell syntax. Or as if he thinks learning a
> bunch of special-case language quirks is somehow better than one that
> you can use in many other situations. When you get something that
> fundamental wrong it is hard to take the rest seriously.
>
Without gainsaying any of the foregoing, let me put the alternative case.
In my opinion, the era of dedicated sys-admins is passing if not already
finished. A good friend of mine, sadly now deceased, began his career working
for RCA adjusting colour television sets in the owner's homes. The
neighbourhood garage with two or three teen-aged grease-monkeys and
owner-mechanic are gone. So too are chauffeur-mechanics for car owners,
elevator operators in buildings, attendants at public toilets (at least in
North America), telephone-operators (mainly), and telephone booths (mostly).
It is called the advance of the ages. All technology must, if it is to become
truly useful, disappear from conscious consideration when operated. Consider
how little user maintenance is even possible with a modern automobile, how
pervasive the idea of instant world-wide voice and data communication is and
the absurd triviality of the operating the technology necessary to accomplish
this is (from the end user's perspective).
How many here remember party-line telephone service? Operator assisted
Station-to-Station and Person-to-Person long distance calls? Telegrams?
Telex? Centrex? Analysis pads?
Residual artifacts of all these things are still to be found but their
function has been subsumed and submerged by technology and the skills
necessary to operate them are obsolete.
All successful automation is going down the same path. The *nixes have not won
the OS wars but they are, I believe, a significant part of the medium term
future of automation. However, to become truly useful to the widest possible
audience the arcane user interface commonly encountered in the myriad of
disjointed *nix system utilities has to be radically simplified to the point
of triviality.
A shell is, at its root, a programming language. A peculiar form of virtual
machine if you will. The vast majority of computer users are not programmers
and will never become so. What this means is that the shell, of whatever ilk,
must be submerged to the view of most users if *nix is to thrive.
For the cognoscenti this will ever be a point of discomfort for it puts into
question the value of their hard won skills. Nonetheless, things like
systemd, gnome3, and no-doubt dumber and more awful things to come are, in my
opinion, inevitable. Computing is just too valuable a resource to be left
solely in the hands of a self-selected elite whose entrance requirement is
mastery of a dozen subtly different ways of telling computer systems to do
essentially the same thing.
There is a reason that things like Webmin already exist and it is not because
of MS-Windows or LUsers. It is because the native administrative interface to
the standard *nix system is a nightmare of complexity, inconsistency and sheer
bloody-mindedness.
At least, that is how I see it. I am not comfortable with change but I have
long ago given up trying to resist it. If systemd presents a common DSL for
service management dependencies __AND__ it works then bring it on. I had to
write upstart Stanzas for IAXModem on C6. I suppose it will not be any harder
in its successor on C7.
--
*** E-Mail is NOT a SECURE channel ***
James B. Byrne mailto:ByrneJB@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Harte & Lyne Limited http://www.harte-lyne.ca
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