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I wrote a step-by-step tutorial on SaltStack. In the process, I worked through my psychological hang-ups with writing. For as long as I can remember, writing ha
by afarrell 10y ago
I wrote a step-by-step tutorial on SaltStack. In the process, I worked through my psychological hang-ups with writing. For as long as I can remember, writing has always made me feel just this terrible anxiety. It made me want to dig my nails into my skin. Throughout high school and university, had come to view writing as this mysterious process. From literary essays to hypothetical military campaign net assessments to design documents to historical arguments, it seemed that I was never able to write anything (other than internet comments) without at least a minor emotional meltdown. As someone who deeply cares about developer experience and good documentation, As someone who believes in the power of well-written text to convey ideas that meaningfully change people's lives--I was ashamed and frustrated and hated myself.
But I had set out at the end of last year to write this tutorial. In starting a task that wasn't assigned to me by someone else, I could control and understand so much more about it: who the audience was, what its scope was, and what even was its point? I had enough of an understanding of the subject that I could grapple with and explain it. I was able to break it down and start to approach it as just...
work.
It worked.
I got into the habit of approaching it like I approached writing code: just a matter of structuring ideas and reflecting on whether they were understandable to people. At the end, I had a working running product that someone could read and follow and learn from.
- jhanschoo 10y agoI used to have similar hang-ups about writing as well. I'm pretty sure that that stemmed from inadequate instruction about genres of writing and the purpose of writing in my education. Where education teaches writing to pass a language exam, the purpose often seems to be about showing that "i am very smart" by using obscure words to communicate a pseudo-argument. What I didn't learn was that writing was about conveying information to an audience, and that the audience and the topic determined the primary requirements.
- afarrell 10y agoYea, I think part of my hangup came from not being able to pursuade folks to answer me when I asked "why are we doing this? What is our goal?". It turns out in real life, people appreciate that question a lot more because it keeps FTE time from being ill-spent.
- atsaloli 10y agoWhere is the tutorial? I have a client in the Bay Area looking for SaltStack training. Do you like to train?
- afarrell 10y agoI'd taken it down because I was hosting it on a DO box and wanted to save some money. I should get it set up somewhere cheaper like github.io I would like to get into software training, but I haven't actually configured SaltStack in a real production environment. I've only used it on the prototyping side of a project. My tutorial was focused on giving a basic intro through setting up Django+Postgres+Nginx. I also haven't touched SaltStack since finishing the tutorial because I got a job in London doing ruby and have been focused on that.
- atsaloli 10y agoI understand. Thanks for getting back to me. I'm still looking for a SaltStack trainer then. :)