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I'd like to make explicit what the author made only implicit, that languages are just one example of many. For me, setting up an apache server used to be a task

I'd like to make explicit what the author made only implicit, that languages are just one example of many. For me, setting up an apache server used to be a task that took 2 hours, even when I was an engineer with half a decade of experience (mostly windows). I view this as a major failure. In fact, if your open source software takes many hours to set up, it's costing hundreds of dollars of effort to learn the unnecessary quirks every time. (Example issues: permissions, conf file failing silently, server installing in multiple distinct places leading to multiple installations, .htaccess ignored due to config setting, config settings including directories of other config settings, logs going to different places, OS security setting screwing up server. )

lmz 9y ago
> In fact, if your open source software takes many hours to set up, it's costing hundreds of dollars of effort to learn the unnecessary quirks every time. You can see it as supporting an ecosystem of packagers and integrators instead. Remember it's "only free if your time is worth nothing".
expertentipp 9y ago
The config mess of Apache gives me traumatic memories. There always exists some other config file or setting parameter which is loaded instead of the one I want.
liveoneggs 9y ago
I like to defend apache a little bit here since you can actually do a lot with no config file or even a very small one. :) It's your crazy (I mean really crazy on debian/ubuntu) distro who made it so scary. https://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Minimal_Config https://wiki.apache.org/httpd/Minimal_Config