[CLUE-Tech] Upgrading to Red Hat V7.2 - Experiences?

[David Willson]

I have to prickle a little at this rant.  If you know me well, you may know
that I am a web-database developer in the Windows space.  I use FrontPage
and Visual Studio and most of my coding is vb'ish.  I also know HTML pretty
well.  FrontPage's WYSIWYG abilities did not, and do not, keep me from
exploring and hand-tuning my HTML.  But it does keep me from 'dead-ending'
when I don't know how to do a particular thing in HTML, and it allows me to
generate pages quickly.  I simply do it in 'gui-mode' and then read and tune
the code afterward.

This is similar to the 'usability' of Red Hat Linux and Corel and Caldera.
They can be used, and explored, and the 'unproductive dead-ends' are fewer
and further between than in more 'bare bones' distros.  I certainly am
curious about the printcap file, and someday I will delve into it, but for
now, I am glad that I can use the gui printer setup and just use the printer
to kick out a report to my boss.  Half an hour vs. a couple hours...  Sign
me up for something 'immediately usable' and 'explorable'.

-----Original Message-----
From: clue-tech-admin at clue.denver.co.us
[mailto:clue-tech-admin at clue.denver.co.us]On Behalf Of
jimintriglia at americanisp.net
Sent: Friday, 30 November, 2001 06:37
To: clue-tech at clue.denver.co.us
Subject: Re: [CLUE-Tech] Upgrading to Red Hat V7.2 - Experiences?


>> Me too. I like the RH distro as the tools enable me to
>> maintain/manage my system quickly, so I can get on
>> with my work. On the other hand, part of my work is
>> understanding Linux inside-out, and RH is not the way
>> to go if this is a goal.

>Really? It's true that LSF, or Gentoo put you in the position of having
>to know more about what you're doing, but to what degree does RH, in and
>of itself, limit that?

It is not so much a matter of limits, as it is human nature - to make use of
an
easy wizard or GUI-based tool, rather than invest time in understanding how
something works low-level. I've noticed Red Hat is going more in the
direction
of 'push-button' Linux, and that's why I am considering alternate Linux
distro's, such as Debian or Slack.

<beginrant>
I remember the same argument when I started out on the web development path
with
M$ FrontPage97. "You can edit HTML if you want to; don't have to use the
WYSIWYG
editor, ya know." Thankfully, my mentor *insisted* I do her projects via a
text
editor, so I would learn HTML, not just the FrontPage tool.

This was wise move, for at the time, FrontPage generated crappy HTML (I
didn't
know it at the time, because I was not looking at what HTML was being
generated
by FP, but my mentor *was*. Hand-editing was needed most times, and
sometimes
the HTML/Javascript would not parse back into the FP WYSIWYG environment(!).

Game over.

Without the knowledge of HTML, I would not be able to get things working,
nor
would I be able to continue a project 'outside' of the 'tool'. Those web dev
pro's that knew only how to use FP, spent most of their time on the phone
with
M$ T/Support when the FP tool failed, as they never bothered to learn HTML
(took
too much time). Ditto the same lesson for tools such as Visual Cafe for Java
(learn to develop Java code first!).

I've noticed with Red Hat's new printer configuration tool.. a note not to
alter
the printcap file manually. Shades of GUI-based tool mindset again. Wonder
how
long until the attitude (from RH) will be 'why are you manually configuring
you
system?' or 'Why do you want to understand what our GUI-tool is doing?"
(heard
that already). Got tired of hearing this from M$, so I left that development
platform.

So, while Wizards (Internet Configurer) and tools (such as RPM) save time
and
effort for corporations and pro's, I've learned to never lose site of
understanding what's happening underneath the toolset, as well as the
ability to
do the same task manually.

What's good for a corporation/industry is not necessarily good for a career
or a
hi-tech professional, yes? Distro like Debian may take longer to
install/configure, etc. (still have apt-get :-) ) but the knowledge of how
to go
about doing things at a 'lower-level' can be invaluable, when the high-level
tools can't/won't get the job done.

</endrant>

HTH

JimI.


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