4 ms·

Agreed. Too much reliance on AWS, Heroku etc. can leave you without vital Linux skills. Linux cli tools are not just for getting a job done, though they're grea

by cutler 4y ago

Agreed. Too much reliance on AWS, Heroku etc. can leave you without vital Linux skills. Linux cli tools are not just for getting a job done, though they're great at what they do. No, they're part of the *nix culture which is what open source software is based on. Only recently have I become aware that it was better to have entered software development in or before the early 2000s, ie. before The Cloud took off. You were forced to learn Linux/BSD cli tools just to swim in the water. I can't imagine, back then, knowing Perl and not knowing Linux or FreeBSD.

bravura 4y ago
I used slackware linux. I wrote assembly code when I was a teenager. I use 'perl -i -pe' constantly. I still don't want to learn a bunch of arcane flags from a bunch of tools with a million gotchas. Sorry. I'd rather focus on the code craft that gives me joy these days. Sorry, I detest this attitude of: "Well I was hazed so why aren't you hazed too?" Did I mention that Russ Cox and I used to write C code with pen and paper? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32874759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32874759 If you haven't, are you even qualified to discuss what vital skills others are missing? Or maybe because I learned perl because it was simpler than tr and awk, I should STFU? Give me a break.
- orthecreedence 4y ago
  > I used slackware linux. I wrote assembly code when I was a teenager. Lol are you me? I grew up with Slack/assembler/softice/etc and I used to host everything on Slack boxes on Linode (bless them for having a pre-built image). But I left it a while ago because I got sick of dealing with hand upgrades and compiling everything from scratch. I feel the same way about other things. I could probably out-CLI most of the people here saying "you should learn linux!" but sometimes I just need to get something done. If I'm trying to get something out the door, I don't give a rat's ass about the details. It's fun and interesting when you're a teenager and it's 4am on a summer night and you've got nothing better to do, but these days I have strict time, limited energy, and I'm not going to spend more time fiddling with things than I need to.
- ilyt 4y ago
  I mean, you can just put it into automation and never have to repeat same linux cmdline dance to do the same thing again. There are plenty of configuration management tools to do so. Hell, I outright forgot some skills because I encoded whatever I will ever need from a given tool in Puppet manifest and didn't had a need to touch the internals again. Docker, k8s and friends are essentially just level above the "just CM", still just use basic linux primitives but with some coordination. The "new toys" are essentially abstractions on what sysadmin would do (anyone remember building chroots ? Yeah I don't liked it either, even if it felt "cool" the first time I did it) and every abstraction will leak which means once you are big and complex enough you will need to debug it. Just that random hobby project probably won't get there and even for work it probably might be someone's else job to debug that > I should STFU? Give me a break ...you probably should, your whining and bragging doesn't add anything to discussion. "Oh I played with cool kids few decades ago, look at me Mr. Important"
  - bravura 4y ago
    I didn't spend six years on a PhD to be called Mr. Important. I'm joking. Okay, bringing this conversation back to a normal tone: I have specific needs and want to get specific things done. I agree everyone should learn basic unix. I also think people should get as low to the metal as possible so they understand performance. But can you acknowledge that there is a near infinite number of things people should learn, and that the priority of that list might be different for other people? That for some, and their technical goals, they might not have the time to prioritize multi-server web app dev when they're focusing on figuring out how to get GPUs to do DDP correctly? I never learned k8s because I all my web apps have super low usage. e.g. data annotation frameworks. I don't know JS and I guess maybe I'd love to, but I'd also like to wait until the field stops moving so correctly so that I could just pick a great framework and not have to relearn everything constantly. HTMX is cool and gives me joy. Can you acknowledge that building tooling that allow devs to focus on what gives them joy is actually a nice thing? We have enough problems in the work we like that we end up spending endless hours debugging. If someone refuses to learn what they need to solve their main technical pursuits, yeah that's a moral failing, but nonetheless there's a finite surface area we can cover and I prefer to focus on learning the things that come up in the line of duty. p.s. what are you working on? Maybe we can play together. I am not being snarky. I'm collaborative and maybe you're cool too. :)

by cutler 4y ago

bravura 4y ago

I used slackware linux. I wrote assembly code when I was a teenager. I use 'perl -i -pe' constantly. I still don't want to learn a bunch of arcane flags from a bunch of tools with a million gotchas. Sorry. I'd rather focus on the code craft that gives me joy these days. Sorry, I detest this attitude of: "Well I was hazed so why aren't you hazed too?" Did I mention that Russ Cox and I used to write C code with pen and paper? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32874759 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32874759 If you haven't, are you even qualified to discuss what vital skills others are missing? Or maybe because I learned perl because it was simpler than tr and awk, I should STFU? Give me a break.

orthecreedence 4y ago
> I used slackware linux. I wrote assembly code when I was a teenager. Lol are you me? I grew up with Slack/assembler/softice/etc and I used to host everything on Slack boxes on Linode (bless them for having a pre-built image). But I left it a while ago because I got sick of dealing with hand upgrades and compiling everything from scratch. I feel the same way about other things. I could probably out-CLI most of the people here saying "you should learn linux!" but sometimes I just need to get something done. If I'm trying to get something out the door, I don't give a rat's ass about the details. It's fun and interesting when you're a teenager and it's 4am on a summer night and you've got nothing better to do, but these days I have strict time, limited energy, and I'm not going to spend more time fiddling with things than I need to.
ilyt 4y ago
I mean, you can just put it into automation and never have to repeat same linux cmdline dance to do the same thing again. There are plenty of configuration management tools to do so. Hell, I outright forgot some skills because I encoded whatever I will ever need from a given tool in Puppet manifest and didn't had a need to touch the internals again. Docker, k8s and friends are essentially just level above the "just CM", still just use basic linux primitives but with some coordination. The "new toys" are essentially abstractions on what sysadmin would do (anyone remember building chroots ? Yeah I don't liked it either, even if it felt "cool" the first time I did it) and every abstraction will leak which means once you are big and complex enough you will need to debug it. Just that random hobby project probably won't get there and even for work it probably might be someone's else job to debug that > I should STFU? Give me a break ...you probably should, your whining and bragging doesn't add anything to discussion. "Oh I played with cool kids few decades ago, look at me Mr. Important"
- bravura 4y ago
  I didn't spend six years on a PhD to be called Mr. Important. I'm joking. Okay, bringing this conversation back to a normal tone: I have specific needs and want to get specific things done. I agree everyone should learn basic unix. I also think people should get as low to the metal as possible so they understand performance. But can you acknowledge that there is a near infinite number of things people should learn, and that the priority of that list might be different for other people? That for some, and their technical goals, they might not have the time to prioritize multi-server web app dev when they're focusing on figuring out how to get GPUs to do DDP correctly? I never learned k8s because I all my web apps have super low usage. e.g. data annotation frameworks. I don't know JS and I guess maybe I'd love to, but I'd also like to wait until the field stops moving so correctly so that I could just pick a great framework and not have to relearn everything constantly. HTMX is cool and gives me joy. Can you acknowledge that building tooling that allow devs to focus on what gives them joy is actually a nice thing? We have enough problems in the work we like that we end up spending endless hours debugging. If someone refuses to learn what they need to solve their main technical pursuits, yeah that's a moral failing, but nonetheless there's a finite surface area we can cover and I prefer to focus on learning the things that come up in the line of duty. p.s. what are you working on? Maybe we can play together. I am not being snarky. I'm collaborative and maybe you're cool too. :)