Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

lavidjio — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 13:49:38 GMT

lavidjio

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

cronos — Fri, 26 May 2006 23:24:00 GMT

Tio_Luiso: I not agree with you; there is a lot of user-frendly visual Linux software, there is no more like ten years ago, when Linux was made for developers by developers. Simply look and interfaces like Gnome and KDE, and projects for PDA like GPE and Opie; is completely false that there is no innovation in the Free Software community:

http://gpe.handhelds.org/
http://opie.handhelds.org/cgi-bin/moin.cgi/

But, even if Microsoft software is easy to learn, there is no gain if the software gets broken very often. Look at this article of PCWorld:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,2,00.asp#millennium
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,3,00.asp#bob
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,125772,pg,3,00.asp#ie6

Personally, I expect high quality software from a multibillion-dollar company that sells their products in hundreds of dollars each one, not like the Free Software community, where programmers write software in their spare time and with their own computers, and share their software at no cost.

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

Tio_Luiso — Thu, 25 May 2006 16:37:47 GMT

Meant "It's not a matter of power"

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

Tio_Luiso — Thu, 25 May 2006 09:53:29 GMT

From my point of view, Microsoft tools are superior to Linux or Unix tools in terms of learning curve. And I don't mean learning curve of Kerberos, or LDAP, or SQL, but learning curve of the tools themselves. Generally speaking they are far more intuitive.

It's now a matter of power, of course in Linux you can do just everything with scripts, while in Windows, only recently you can do things with scripting, and from UI you cannot do everything, BUT you can do most frequent things more easily.

And that's productivity, too.

Reply to Tio_Luiso

einhverfr — Wed, 24 May 2006 20:37:00 GMT

In my own experience, the move to UNIX and Linux tends to improve productivity as long as the end user isn't afraid of the software. The feeling of "I can't do such-and-such" is quite dangerous to every computer user, so unfamiliarity breeds powerlessness.

It is indeed not a matter of lacking good management tools. Linux usually comes with one extremely powerful all-purpose management tool called bash. With bash, cron, and friends (ssh, for example, is really helpful, or in the alternative, I will use kerberized telnet), I can do *anything* I can imagine. Give me a computer management problem and I can give you a solution. And there is no environment I can imagine where such simple scripting cannot be used to manage more Linux systems than Windows.

However, I can say this-- intermediate Windows users (including most MCSE's) have serious issues switching to Linux because they are comfortable with Windows, but not comfortable with computers in general. Hence they say "I can't do this the same way," have to unlearn things, and get very frustrated for a while. It is the "I can't" type thoughts that kill productivity on any platform, not the lack of management tools.

Indeed, the first time I installed FreeBSD, I had worked with Linux for a while, and it took me three days to get a working installation! I would have had an easier time if I was entirely new to FreeBSD. And there were many times when I just had to tell myself "pretend it's Linux-- XFree86 can't be *that* different on both platforms."

Of course the second time I installed FreeBSD, I had it up and running very quickly.

Best Wishes,
Chris Travers
Metatron Technology Consulting

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

Tio_Luiso — Tue, 23 May 2006 17:52:14 GMT

I think cronos has his point.

Microsoft approach is to do apps that are user friendly, easy to use, and that is OK when the app is Office or Windows XP. Users in general don't need to know the inner working of the products they use, like I don't know the inner working of a combustion engine or a TV. It simply works.

However, the same logic can be quite dangerous when we're talking about Server OSes, Databases, and Programming. User friendly tools make people with knowledge more productive, but that same tools make people without enough knowledge fool theirselves thinking Administering or Programming is easy.

In this way, Microsoft approach is both its best virtue and its worst sin.

The same can be said about Linux (or UNIX). It can be so absolutely obscure and lacking of good managing tools that it can reduce productivity.

That's my thought. Now you can yell at me.

re: Automation: Not at the cost of core expertise

cronos — Mon, 22 May 2006 23:43:39 GMT

I totally agree with this post, but in MY own experience, I never met a Windows Engineer that know exactly what are he doing, or what is doing the computer with certain software or in certain situation.

Linux (in general) is more difficult to set up than Windows, but besides the fact that you only do one setup in Linux and it doesn't get broken mysteriously, the extra complexity and manual tunning in Linux are an excelent deterrent for people that don't know exactly what are they doing, or what they want.

Visual Studio is a good IDE, but everyone that knows how to drag and drop, thinks that he's a programmer, and everyone that knows how to install Windows, feels himself as an OS expert. I have seen many cases when some IT department has the money to buy some solution, but when things goes wrong, nobody has idea what could it be.

From my point of view, in the Free Software community the value is in the people, but in the Windows community (if exist something like that), the value is in the licenses.