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Firstly the model of sshing into your server and trying to run commands on it directly is more or less obsolete. Secondly the presence of all these utilities o

Firstly the model of sshing into your server and trying to run commands on it directly is more or less obsolete. Secondly the presence of all these utilities on a machine is far from guaranteed - expecting Python to be present is no more or less likely.

cranekam 5y ago
> Firstly the model of sshing into your server and trying to run commands on it directly is more or less obsolete. Why do you get to declare what is acceptable (using UNIX tools) or what's now obsolete (SSHing into a host)? It's rather presumptuous to believe you can speak for everyone. Perhaps you only ever deploy code using k8s and never need to use a command line but that doesn't mean we all do. There are many reasons one would use these tools and approaches (fun, small scale, investigating problems, anything).
- ccalloway 5y ago
  You might think 'fun, small scale, investigating problems' are good justifications for your working practices, but your boss's boss's boss does not. They would prefer you to have less fun. Or perhaps to have fun on your own time after being laid off.
  - herbst 5y ago
    My boss (me) doesn't mind me dabbling around in my servers via SSH. Not everyone of us works for evil cooperate.
    - ccalloway 5y ago
      That's fine but you are proving my point. I didn't say that no one uses shell, just that there aren't good practical reasons for doing so. Of course lots of people do it because they enjoy it or are used to it, and for them cost and related considerations don't matter. The same way that lots of people ride horses.
  - cranekam 5y ago
    head in hands For what it's worth, my bosses all the way up to CEO of a 50k person company were all pretty pleased with the working practices I used (medieval things like strace(1), perf(1) and sort(1)) to save thousands of servers' worth of CPU. I'm not advocating for editing code live over SSH but there are still plenty of legitimate reasons to SSH into a server and use UNIX tools. Since you're clearly trolling I'll leave it here.
spekcular 5y ago
How is it obsolete? This is an honest question. I SSH into the personal server hosting my website and tweak things all the time. If there's an easier way to get things done – let me know!
- oblio 5y ago
  At a higher level of operation, companies are switching to immutable infrastructure. So you don't need to SSH to debug, you'd just re-deploy another container or something. However, there's an <<extremely>> long tail of places, equivalent to mom and pop stores, where SSH will still be in use for a long, long time. I include antiquated banks or government in "mom and pop stores" for the purposes of this discussion :-p
  - jyounker 5y ago
    > So you don't need to SSH to debug, you'd just re-deploy another container or something. I've still never seen a place where this was true. At some point you always run into a situation where you need to see what's happening inside the container in production at a level of detail that isn't available except by directly connecting. So you attach a sidecar with SSH, or you deploy a debug version of your container that runs SSH, and then you SSH into your container and see what's happening.
- ccalloway 5y ago
  I mean, the example you gave of what you use ssh for is itself an obsolete function. Using a personal Unix server to host a personal website is not really any different than making your own clothes using a sewing machine. It is perfectly fine - but it's a niche activity done by hobbyists who enjoy the process itself.
  - spekcular 5y ago
    How should I be hosting my website then? Suppose for the sake of an example it's some simple custom HTML, CSS, and a few javascript math apps. I don't enjoy the process, I just need the damn website online. (Again – an honest question! I was never formally instructed in these matters.)
flohofwoe 5y ago
First, Python2, or Python3, if Python3, what incompatible version exactly? And what's the executable name, python, python2, python3? On macOS, there's still only Python 2.7 pre-installed (Xcode then goes ahead and also installs an equally outdated Python 3 version). On Windows the Python executable is an empty stub which opens the app store. I wish the situation would be better.
- microtherion 5y ago
  I would argue, however, that the situation for shells is even worse, as: 1. The version of bash is even more out of date (Dating back to 2007 on current macOS releases). 2. #!/bin/sh Could give you any one of a number of slightly different shell implementations. 3. The differences between Python versions are clearly documented, and, while painful, possible to work around. The differences between shell versions can be far more subtle and more difficult to discover. 4. You not only need to deal with the shell version, but the version of every tool you use as well.
  - devenvdev 5y ago
    I would argue that in practice, the only difference between implementations was an inconvenience to me was on Mac - I have to use gsed instead of sed, etc. Everywhere else, it's pretty much consistent from the one-liner user POV. On the other hand, I occasionally encounter different python versions, which always includes some mental effort to tune in.
    - microtherion 5y ago
      What kind of ecosystem are you operating in outside of macOS? If you're operating in a Linux monoculture, I'm sure your experience is quite realistic, but historically, there were several different sed's (of which the fact that macOS uses BSD sed by default is a reminder), several awks, several bourne-like shells (some of which still exist, optimized for either better interactivity or smaller footprint).
- oblio 5y ago

cranekam 5y ago

> Firstly the model of sshing into your server and trying to run commands on it directly is more or less obsolete. Why do you get to declare what is acceptable (using UNIX tools) or what's now obsolete (SSHing into a host)? It's rather presumptuous to believe you can speak for everyone. Perhaps you only ever deploy code using k8s and never need to use a command line but that doesn't mean we all do. There are many reasons one would use these tools and approaches (fun, small scale, investigating problems, anything).

ccalloway 5y ago
You might think 'fun, small scale, investigating problems' are good justifications for your working practices, but your boss's boss's boss does not. They would prefer you to have less fun. Or perhaps to have fun on your own time after being laid off.
- herbst 5y ago
  My boss (me) doesn't mind me dabbling around in my servers via SSH. Not everyone of us works for evil cooperate.
  - ccalloway 5y ago
    That's fine but you are proving my point. I didn't say that no one uses shell, just that there aren't good practical reasons for doing so. Of course lots of people do it because they enjoy it or are used to it, and for them cost and related considerations don't matter. The same way that lots of people ride horses.
- cranekam 5y ago
  head in hands For what it's worth, my bosses all the way up to CEO of a 50k person company were all pretty pleased with the working practices I used (medieval things like strace(1), perf(1) and sort(1)) to save thousands of servers' worth of CPU. I'm not advocating for editing code live over SSH but there are still plenty of legitimate reasons to SSH into a server and use UNIX tools. Since you're clearly trolling I'll leave it here.

spekcular 5y ago

How is it obsolete? This is an honest question. I SSH into the personal server hosting my website and tweak things all the time. If there's an easier way to get things done – let me know!

oblio 5y ago
At a higher level of operation, companies are switching to immutable infrastructure. So you don't need to SSH to debug, you'd just re-deploy another container or something. However, there's an <<extremely>> long tail of places, equivalent to mom and pop stores, where SSH will still be in use for a long, long time. I include antiquated banks or government in "mom and pop stores" for the purposes of this discussion :-p
- jyounker 5y ago
  > So you don't need to SSH to debug, you'd just re-deploy another container or something. I've still never seen a place where this was true. At some point you always run into a situation where you need to see what's happening inside the container in production at a level of detail that isn't available except by directly connecting. So you attach a sidecar with SSH, or you deploy a debug version of your container that runs SSH, and then you SSH into your container and see what's happening.
ccalloway 5y ago
I mean, the example you gave of what you use ssh for is itself an obsolete function. Using a personal Unix server to host a personal website is not really any different than making your own clothes using a sewing machine. It is perfectly fine - but it's a niche activity done by hobbyists who enjoy the process itself.
- spekcular 5y ago
  How should I be hosting my website then? Suppose for the sake of an example it's some simple custom HTML, CSS, and a few javascript math apps. I don't enjoy the process, I just need the damn website online. (Again – an honest question! I was never formally instructed in these matters.)

flohofwoe 5y ago

First, Python2, or Python3, if Python3, what incompatible version exactly? And what's the executable name, python, python2, python3? On macOS, there's still only Python 2.7 pre-installed (Xcode then goes ahead and also installs an equally outdated Python 3 version). On Windows the Python executable is an empty stub which opens the app store. I wish the situation would be better.

microtherion 5y ago
I would argue, however, that the situation for shells is even worse, as: 1. The version of bash is even more out of date (Dating back to 2007 on current macOS releases). 2. #!/bin/sh Could give you any one of a number of slightly different shell implementations. 3. The differences between Python versions are clearly documented, and, while painful, possible to work around. The differences between shell versions can be far more subtle and more difficult to discover. 4. You not only need to deal with the shell version, but the version of every tool you use as well.
- devenvdev 5y ago
  I would argue that in practice, the only difference between implementations was an inconvenience to me was on Mac - I have to use gsed instead of sed, etc. Everywhere else, it's pretty much consistent from the one-liner user POV. On the other hand, I occasionally encounter different python versions, which always includes some mental effort to tune in.
  - microtherion 5y ago
    What kind of ecosystem are you operating in outside of macOS? If you're operating in a Linux monoculture, I'm sure your experience is quite realistic, but historically, there were several different sed's (of which the fact that macOS uses BSD sed by default is a reminder), several awks, several bourne-like shells (some of which still exist, optimized for either better interactivity or smaller footprint).
oblio 5y ago