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Who wrote the network transport code that shepherded the bits from your post to the hacker news backend? What Ethernet devices did it transit and who wrote that

by yareal 3y ago

Who wrote the network transport code that shepherded the bits from your post to the hacker news backend? What Ethernet devices did it transit and who wrote that code? What tradeoffs were made between hardware performance characteristics in the interrupt handlers in your network card? What about your keyboard? Did you choose cat 5 or cat 6 cables for this post to HN? Were those cables shielded? There are many many occasions where something is below the level of abstraction that you care about. Don't assume that because you care about a particular level of abstraction that everyone else should too.

lucideer 3y ago
> Who wrote the network transport code that shepherded the bits from your post to the hacker news backend? What Ethernet devices did it transit and who wrote that code? What tradeoffs were made between hardware performance characteristics in the interrupt handlers in your network card? What about your keyboard? Did you choose cat 5 or cat 6 cables for this post to HN? Were those cables shielded? Are you asking whether I know these things or whether I'd like to? Or whether I'd like the freedom to make choices about these questions -vs- each of them being chosen for me without opportunity for input or insight? I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that, for most people, independent of their level of technical knowledge, the ideal is for answers to all of your questions to be available & accessible in some way, & for there to be choice in that market. People can choose to take simple defaults without delving into the hows & whys but I can't see why those same people would object to others having choice & transparency around those defaults. In summary: I don't know what point you're trying to make.
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Anyone can learn these things (the workings of pysat) if they want to. Sometimes the inner workings and history of things is hidden as proprietary secrets, but usually that isn't the case and somebody who's curious can dig into how things work and who invented them.
  - lucideer 3y ago
    This is very true in this case, but not in all cases, & I think the gp's point w.r.t. such things being (relatively) obscured applies universally. All systems stand to benefit from constructive feedback on things being clearer & more transparent.
- yareal 3y ago
  You asked "why wouldn't they care?" I'd argue you don't care below some level of abstraction. I'm pointing out that we all have a limited capacity to care at different levels of depth. And people might not want to care because they have other things they want to care about. You don't care about the whole stack you use. Others don't either, you sound like you are chastising others for not caring.
  - lucideer 3y ago
    > people might not want to care [...] you sound like you are chastising others for not caring. You sound like you're reading things from my comments that suit your own rebuttal rather than what I've actually said. From my first comment: > The user of course shouldn't be required to care from my second comment; > People can choose to take simple defaults without delving into the hows & whys I'm literally just arguing for choice, transparency & availability. I'm not proposing placing any further burdens on users regardless of what they want to care about.
Barrin92 3y ago
>where something is below the level of abstraction that you care about. and because this attitude has become so prevalent people now pile shoddy abstraction on top of shoddy abstraction without interest or ability to reason about what that does down the stack. The lesson from this isn't "you don't need to care about how things work" but invest some time into going one or two levels deeper than you "need" to. If you have no idea how things work under the hood the moment things tend to break or leak you're going to end up clueless.

by yareal 3y ago

lucideer 3y ago

> Who wrote the network transport code that shepherded the bits from your post to the hacker news backend? What Ethernet devices did it transit and who wrote that code? What tradeoffs were made between hardware performance characteristics in the interrupt handlers in your network card? What about your keyboard? Did you choose cat 5 or cat 6 cables for this post to HN? Were those cables shielded? Are you asking whether I know these things or whether I'd like to? Or whether I'd like the freedom to make choices about these questions -vs- each of them being chosen for me without opportunity for input or insight? I don't think it's particularly controversial to say that, for most people, independent of their level of technical knowledge, the ideal is for answers to all of your questions to be available & accessible in some way, & for there to be choice in that market. People can choose to take simple defaults without delving into the hows & whys but I can't see why those same people would object to others having choice & transparency around those defaults. In summary: I don't know what point you're trying to make.

lupusreal 3y ago
Anyone can learn these things (the workings of pysat) if they want to. Sometimes the inner workings and history of things is hidden as proprietary secrets, but usually that isn't the case and somebody who's curious can dig into how things work and who invented them.
- lucideer 3y ago
  This is very true in this case, but not in all cases, & I think the gp's point w.r.t. such things being (relatively) obscured applies universally. All systems stand to benefit from constructive feedback on things being clearer & more transparent.
yareal 3y ago
You asked "why wouldn't they care?" I'd argue you don't care below some level of abstraction. I'm pointing out that we all have a limited capacity to care at different levels of depth. And people might not want to care because they have other things they want to care about. You don't care about the whole stack you use. Others don't either, you sound like you are chastising others for not caring.
- lucideer 3y ago
  > people might not want to care [...] you sound like you are chastising others for not caring. You sound like you're reading things from my comments that suit your own rebuttal rather than what I've actually said. From my first comment: > The user of course shouldn't be required to care from my second comment; > People can choose to take simple defaults without delving into the hows & whys I'm literally just arguing for choice, transparency & availability. I'm not proposing placing any further burdens on users regardless of what they want to care about.

Barrin92 3y ago

>where something is below the level of abstraction that you care about. and because this attitude has become so prevalent people now pile shoddy abstraction on top of shoddy abstraction without interest or ability to reason about what that does down the stack. The lesson from this isn't "you don't need to care about how things work" but invest some time into going one or two levels deeper than you "need" to. If you have no idea how things work under the hood the moment things tend to break or leak you're going to end up clueless.