1 Mar
2023
1 Mar
'23
8:34 a.m.
On Tue, Feb 28, 2023 at 8:38 PM Will Senn <will.senn(a)gmail.com> wrote:
I'm curious about the experience of those of
y'all who actually used them. Were there any early standouts and why did they stand
out?
This is not going to be popular, but...
Nemeth, E., Synder, G., & Seebass, S. (1989). UNIX
System Administration Handbook (5th edition is another fatty)
This book gave me some terrible advice when I was very young and impressionable.
In there somewhere it says something about not doing something unless
you're prepared to do it right lest one spend more time working around
a work-around than one would have spent just doing it well in the
first place.
The conclusion is, of course, true, but the admonition ignores all
sorts of externalities, like waiting users. And in some cases it could
really lead to paralysis ("omg _everything_ is broken and I can't do X
until I do Y, but to do Y I have to do this other thing and if I
really want to do it right I need to start by traveling to Nepal and
shaving this Yak, but I need to get my passport renewed and damn I
really oughta lose 20 pounds before I get my passport photo taken for
the next ten years, so I guess I oughta join a gym...but I can't even
find one because the network is down and I can't get to Google, but
how can I fix the network if I have not shaved the Nepalese yak?!").
Talk about letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
Hopefully nowadays we have a better appreciation of the power of
incrementalism; those grand plans for the perfect system rarely come
to fruition. It's better to be flexible and make small, impactful
changes along the way towards a better system, always being mindful of
and tamping down encroaching entropy.
- Dan C.