> On Feb 22, 2018, at 9:34 AM, hw <hw@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Robert P. J. Day wrote:
>> On Thu, 22 Feb 2018, hw wrote:
>>>
>>> The students you need to teach things like this are the ones that
>>> will never become good admins.
>> uh, that's kind of a condescending attitude to take towards students
>> who simply want to learn. are you this way with everyone?
>
> Yes, and there´s nothing condescending about this. A student who is too
> chicken to try out basic things, be it within dedicated testing environments
> or, if need be, otherwise, will not become a good admin and is probably
> not a person well suited to bearing the responsibility that will be bestowed
> upon them, partly due to a lack of good judgement.
I was going to let this go, as we’re getting farther and farther from CentOS, but this has been bothering me. I don’t think you’ve evaluated how the attitude expressed in your statement would tend to encourage hotshots who dive in and make changes without knowing enough, and would tend to weed out inexperienced potential sysadmins who have any degree of caution. Confidence comes from knowledge, knowledge comes from practice… and there are a lot of potential sysadmins from non-standard backgrounds who have the potential to be great at the work, but need extra encouragement in the beginning, with a safe place to learn and make mistakes.
If my past teachers and mentors had had the attitude you expressed there, I’d never have gotten into systems administration—and I can tell that I’m going to be a good sysadmin, so that would have been a shame. (I’ve been in systems administration for a grand total of about five months, after over a decade in related IT work.)
Liza Furr
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