Confessions of a SysAdmin 385
Mr.Fork writes "Scott Merrill from CrunchGear has a confession. He really, really hates computers. He writes: 'No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life, and I love the escapism they sometimes afford; but I actually hate the computers themselves. Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software.' Does his editorial speak to all of us in similar IT-related fields? Do we all silently hate the complexities and idiosyncrasies computers have, like error messages and UI designs that make no sense to the common user, which make our tech professions miserable?"
It is called "a love/hate relationship" (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
I hate a lot of modern software (open source, closed source, whatever) because of the enormous, and often pointless complexities. I miss the joys of being a kid in front of my first 16k home computer, it was an adventure. I miss my first few years with *nix, when the operating system was populated with fine-tuned tools focused on accomplishing a single job and doing it well.
It's true that software and hardware often seems more like a balancing act. You try to find an equilibrium where you don't need cron jobs to stop the daemon that spontaneously combusts, or where the Windows roaming profile will properly synchronize with the server copy and not barf in a dozen different ways, and hope beyond hope that the patches you're getting won't cause more problems than they solve.
I think the reason, at least for me, is that there's little sense that I have control over how the systems work. Anything non-trivial involves so many separate processes, functions, modules and reliance on everything tying together that sometimes when I get something working, I'm more amazed than pleased.
But that's the job. You control what you can and try to mitigate what you can't.
Oh really? (Score:4, Interesting)
Computers are fragile, unintuitive things...a hodge-podge of brittle hardware
Sounds like Steve Jobs can claim another victim.
Sounds more to me like he's about to get another customer [youtube.com].
Re:I don't hate computers (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Which make our tech professions miserable? (Score:3, Interesting)
Which still has no bearing on whether I like it. I'm with Mr Merrill on this one. Playing with computers sure was fun in the beginning. It's 2010 now, and I'm still dealing with retarded ideas or retarded implementations of otherwise good ideas. I'm not suggesting the computer should ever stop evolving, but as I look around, I see a lot of stuff that should just simply be "good enough", not in beta, not difficult to integrate, not a placeholder until the next revision.
Re:Macs? (Score:3, Interesting)
and where do you find which command? how do you know the package name? where is that information. how do you know what's in each package? what happens when your distro doesn't have the package you want?
The linux command line is only useful if you happen to have memorized the hundreds of commands and their modifiers. If you don't know what you need to get started with however it is very very difficult to learn.
I've always thought the opposite! (Score:2, Interesting)
Computers are great, the endless possibilities and beautiful complexity built into a simple box.
At the same time I hate the things we do with them. All the brilliance just created so we can send pointless 140 character messages saying how we enjoyed our
porkchops for dinner (with nice apple sauce too!).
25 years of sysadmin work - love/hate relationship (Score:4, Interesting)
I hate computers, but love customers (Score:5, Interesting)
So, ever since family and friends found out I could help with arcane errors and problems with their Apple ][+ computers (did I mention I'm old? That was back in the early 80s) I've been standing between computers and users and trying to reconcile both to each other.
Eventually, this turned in to a great opportunity for me to help people with their use of current technology. Are computers and software packages irritating? You bet! But being in the middle position between the user and CPU has been something I've enjoyed for more than a decade.
Sure, I've been a developer and struggled directly with computers on one hand and produced software that unintentionally frustrated users on the other. But it's standing in the gap between the technology and humanity that I find myself the most valuable.
As long as computers and software suck there will be a need for people like me. And, as it turns out, people prefer to turn their problems over to other people -- not wizards, FAQs, etc. -- for assistance.
The trick is not considering users as the problem but oneself as a key to the solution.
Re:I don't hate computers (Score:5, Interesting)
I love computers. I wouldn't have gotten into the field if I didn't love them.
Yeah, so did I. But that was thirty years ago. I've seen the industry take so many wrong turns since then I'm alternately astonished, appalled, and amused now. That's why I'm a manager now... well, that and the money. I try all the time to get the guys who work for me to understand that, for most users, simpler = better.
I get pissed off every time some stupid OS vendor (Microsoft, Apple, or Linux distro) changes its API for no apparent benefit to the customer or because some jack-off OS developer wants a new flavor of the day. I get saddened every time some poor user gets run into their individual brick walls because some crappy hardware vendor decided to save a nickel on a mobo component. So all of you wankers who are bitching about the "walled garden" model, all I can say is that you brought it on yourselves. You made your systems so crappy and hard to use that no one wants to deal with the crappiness anymore. They'll sacrifice their "freedoms" (which they didn't really want in the first place) for simplicity. And, in the end, you'll be the ones screwed, with no interesting APIs and nothing new and shiny to play with. And all because you couldn't see past your own need for complexity to keep you mentally entertained while you cranked out yet another for loop (and didn't develop the languages that had the for loops internalized so you could map functions onto collections without a bunch of hideous repetitive syntax, anyhow).
I didn't understand this ten years ago when I told an industry luminary that I wanted to make things simpler for the programmer. He looked at me and said "Don't talk to me about programmers. I don't give a shit about how hard it is for the programmers. I want things simple for the users." He was so right.
Of course, maybe I'm cranky because it's late on Friday and I have a cold. Yeah... that's it...
Re:I don't hate computers (Score:5, Interesting)
There's some bullshit in modern computer hardware design too though. Consider X86. It's inferior to man architectures, but it still exists because the install base for it is so huge it can't be stopped. BIOS seriously sucks, they are all different, love to use arcane terms, often vary wildly even in models form the same vendor in the same product line, and the process to upgrade them is often fraught with danger. Printers need drivers, that are generally platform specific, even on basic models. Hard drives can fail (and fail often) in ways that silently corrupt data with no indication to the user or the OS. ECC has existed for decades yet consumer machines never have it, leading to memory problems causing seemingly random, unrelated issues, that only an in depth low level memory analysis can solve ( requiring you to know the problem before you know the cause). Hardware RAID is often arcane, and a simple mistake can destroy your entire array. Manufacturers save pennies on parts like capacitors by using parts with ratings lower then the design required, resulting in expensive repairs. OEM's release equipment using draft or early revisions of specs that cause weird, hard to diagnose compatibility problems. SSD's could be the single largest performance increase for your average office user in 5-10 years, but they are severely limited because we do not have a good technology to interface with them, and shoehorn them into the tech used for mechanical drives for compatibility reasons. If you were to design the PC platform from scratch today, there's a lot of arcane, outdated cruft you could remove that's only there for backwards compatibility reasons.
Re:Macs? (Score:3, Interesting)
The linux command line is god damn useful if you only know three commands. The more you know, the more useful it is.
To bitch about how hard it is to install stuff on linux shows real ignorance. 5-10 years ago, yes, it was a bitch. I will fully give you that. In 2001-2003 or so when I was playing around with linux, it was terrible. Currently, it blows windows out of the water. My mom's a retired librarian, and she can use the package manager in Ubuntu just fine. As a "sysadmin", I'd hope you could do better than her.
and where do you find which command? how do you know the package name? where is that information. how do you know what's in each package? what happens when your distro doesn't have the package you want?
Aaaah, you "sysadmin" from mom's basement. Got it. For the record, on Ubuntu, it's apt, apt-get to install and remove stuff, apt-cache to search for programs and get more information on them. Google can help you a lot with these things. As can the myriad of user guides and forums dedicated to new users.
But you really didn't want answers, did you?
Re:No, you hate software, not computers. (Score:2, Interesting)
1- you install anti-virus software and your machine slows down. You want faster software so you buy a new PC with new windows
2- virus kills your copy of windows. you buy new windows to reinstall
3- virus spams all your friends via email
4- virus grabs your credit card - automatically purchases new copy of Windows
So that virus problem that Windows has is really a feature in disguise
Re:Yeah, me too (Score:3, Interesting)
Do you really need XP? Is it such an improvement over 2000 or even NT4.0?
I dislike this arbitrary line drawn in the sand. Its like you're my grandpa saying something like "and thats how we liked it." I would easily argue that the UAC, improved UI, and dozen or so needed features make Win7 a larger jump from XP than XP ever was from 2000.
Where's all this XP love even coming from? Its a mess of an OS that got by on dumb luck and MS finally getting the second service pack right. Admin by default, fisher price colors, insecure as anything, long boot times, shitty installer (floppy drive need for RAID/SCSI, really?), IE6 nightmare for several years, etc.