[aklug] Re: Slackware says "I told you so!"

On Sat, 26 Feb 2011, Christopher Howard wrote:

> I enjoyed the article. Another way to put it: If you understand how
> something works, you are going to be better working with it. Unix forces
> you to understand how it works, so you will be able to accomplish more
> and better things with it than you would with operating systems that
> take the opposite approach.
>
> However, it didn't address more fundamental issues: Is it necessarily a
> good thing for a person to be required to learn how his software works
> in order to benefit from it? For example: a person drives a car to work
> every day, but he doesn't understand how internal combustion engines
> work. Does that necessarily mean he is dumb? Maybe it just isn't his
> area of expertise. Maybe he doesn't have the time to learn how cars work.

I think you missed the point of the article. It's not whether it's
necessary to understand internal combustion to drive a car, it's whether
you're going to be more successful getting on the road again once the car
breaks down in the middle of nowhere.

> You imply vim is "superior" to pico, nano, et cetera. But your unstated
> assumption was that "superior" means "I can accomplish a whole lot more
> with it than with other editors because I know what I'm doing." But when
> my buddy at work has to spend 20 minutes looking through a Linux
> reference book to figure out how to edit two lines in a config file
> using vim, it doesn't seem very "superior" to him.

:-) You also seem to misunderstand my vi(m) jab. Yes, it is my personal
choice, but spurring on a decades old debate which has long devolved into
silliness is done more for good natured entertainment than rabid dogmatism.

That said, I can easily play pedagogue still. Whether your buddy knows how
to drive a stick shift has no bearing on whether it's more expedient to walk
a hundred miles or drive it. Technical superiority is independent of
learning curve. Resource utilization is easy to measure. Number of
keystrokes needed for mass edits can be easily measured. Whether an editor
is a standard that is *always* available and whether or one is only
occasionally present is easily measured. In short, it matters not one iota
whether your buddy finds something easy/intuitive/whatever, it only matters
what the raw functionality is capable of, should one put in the effort to
become proficient in it.

> My answer to my own question is: yes, ultimately it is always better to
> thoroughly understand any framework you use. But getting from point A to
> point B is a bit more challenging in the real world. Which is why, last
> time I checked, Ubuntu is still more popular than Slackware and Gentoo
> combined, even though they are clearly "superior" distros.

:-) You make my arguments for me. In the spirit of the article: what is
the *average* diagnostic skill level of Ubuntu users versus the average
Slack user? To make a more finer point on it (especially for those of us
hiring prospective UNIX admins) who would you rather have on staff when a
server goes down: an Ubuntu user or a Slack user? If, as a
generalization, it can be held as true that Slack users have deeper
knowledge of system internals than the other, your choice is rather clear.

None of this, however, is meant as an insult to the overwhelming Ubuntu
hordes on this list. From personal experience I can vouch that one's
preference for distributions is an unreliable indicator of one's expertise.
We have some very good hackers on this list which are Ubuntu advocates,
probably one for every distro out there. Using an "easy to use"
distribution is not an inhibitor to greater learning. But it still has to
be noted that while easy distros don't prevent you from learning, others do
damned near demand it if you want to get anything done. And that can be a
powerful incentive.

The funny part of your last sentence is that Slack/Ubuntu/whatever *aren't*
superior to one another. It can be debated that perhaps one favors a more
personally desireable default configuration, but that's all too subjective.
Especially when you consider that for the core OS all the distributions are
90% identical. It's the *same* software.

Just goes to show that there's always more than one way to skin a cat... no
offense to the LOLcat devoutees out there. ;-)

         --Arthur Corliss
           Live Free or Die
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Received on Sun Feb 27 13:53:17 2011