D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> On Sun, 1 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>>> In my case, it is because I am not working as a programmer, so I have
>>> not requirements to be productive or to be able to generate any income
>>> of programming.
>>
>> I am not programming for profit any longer. Thank God. I program for
>> beauty now. This change has been the hardest thing I had to do and it's
>> been so worth it.
>
> Why? How was it to work as a programmer and what was it that you
> didn't like about it?

I never worked on obviously interesting systems. (There was only one
exceptional project that I was hired to do and I felt I was doing the
type of programming that I would call cool programming. This was one of
the last commercial projects I worked on. By then, I was already an
independent contractor, not an employee, so this project does not even
count as something I did while an employee in a company.) Over the
years, I felt I was just contributing to the profit of the company owner
and nothing else---not even my satisfaction was being rewarded, except
for the bill-paying type of satisfaction (if you would).

Unfortunately, to pay bills I had to spend more than I wanted of my life
as a company employee. I had to explicitly design an operation to do a
career change and that was really worth it.

> When I graduated from university, I wanted to become a programmer, but
> at that time, only 10+ years of experience was wanted on the job
> market, so life decided that I should work in infrastructure/system
> administration instead.

I always thought of system administration as a programming job. In
fact, a fun one. Initially I wanted to be a UNIX system administrator.
But my professional life began in a web world when most jobs I could get
were all web related. Deep web projects always involve UNIX
programming, but I was never really hired for deep projects. As a
result, I kept doing web programming to pay bills. So I had to study
and invent projects in order to study the other sides of computer
science so I would not spend my life with technology and culture I did
not even appreciate. That actually paid off. For the first time in my
life, I can say I really like my job.

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

>> When I graduated from university, I wanted to become a programmer, but
>> at that time, only 10+ years of experience was wanted on the job
>> market, so life decided that I should work in infrastructure/system
>> administration instead.
>
> I always thought of system administration as a programming job. In
> fact, a fun one. Initially I wanted to be a UNIX system administrator.

Yes, having worked as one, I can see that. For me, the pleasure was
always in automation, and the quick feedback loops. I would work on a
piece of the infra-stack, automate as much as possible, and you can do
that in small cycles of days and weeks, instead of the endless bug
hunting the developers at one of my jobs did, in some kind of million+
line CAD software. I always got the feeling talking with them, that
their job would never end, and you would only see small,
micro-incremental improvements stretching over years.

Mean while, I'd happily automate my systems, deployments, reports,
statistics etc. so yes, some kind of programming always was there during
my time as a linux/unix system administrator.

> But my professional life began in a web world when most jobs I could get
> were all web related. Deep web projects always involve UNIX
> programming, but I was never really hired for deep projects. As a
> result, I kept doing web programming to pay bills. So I had to study
> and invent projects in order to study the other sides of computer
> science so I would not spend my life with technology and culture I did
> not even appreciate. That actually paid off. For the first time in my
> life, I can say I really like my job.

Happy to hear it! =)

D <nospam@example.net> writes:

> On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>>> When I graduated from university, I wanted to become a programmer, but
>>> at that time, only 10+ years of experience was wanted on the job
>>> market, so life decided that I should work in infrastructure/system
>>> administration instead.
>>
>> I always thought of system administration as a programming job. In
>> fact, a fun one. Initially I wanted to be a UNIX system administrator.
>
> Yes, having worked as one, I can see that. For me, the pleasure was
> always in automation, and the quick feedback loops. I would work on a
> piece of the infra-stack, automate as much as possible, and you can do
> that in small cycles of days and weeks, instead of the endless bug
> hunting the developers at one of my jobs did, in some kind of million+
> line CAD software. I always got the feeling talking with them, that
> their job would never end, and you would only see small,
> micro-incremental improvements stretching over years.
>
> Mean while, I'd happily automate my systems, deployments, reports,
> statistics etc. so yes, some kind of programming always was there during
> my time as a linux/unix system administrator.

I recognize all of the above. But I think there's an even stronger
point for system administration back then. When I got introduced to
UNIX systems, it was a time where there were UNIX users and people would
still share the system. So UNIX administrators did programming that
everyone around the system noticed. There were mailing lists, NNTP
servers and IRC servers so that people living the same area could talk
to on a daily basis. Getting online and seeing there were people online
too was a joy.

The web evolved and computers became cheap, so everyone got their own
and that seems to have isolated everyone. Instead of talking to your
neighbor, you'd then interact with a lot of people across the world.
System administrators got buried. We only notice their presence now
when things go completely wrong. Today, the new generation of
programmers have not even heard of W. Richard Stevens. I have no idea
how they understand the systems they use.

You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
but no, thanks. ``I have my own system.'' They see no fun in sharing
in a UNIX system.

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
>but no, thanks. ``I have my own system.'' They see no fun in sharing
>in a UNIX system.

On some shell accounts here, "social commands" (like "finger",
"who", etc.) have been disabled. It might have something to
do with the "Datenschutz" ("privacy") laws.

The admins also do not seem to use "motd" anymore, instead
system information seems to be published on some web page.

I had one free shell account about 20 years on a system where
you could log in and play nethack. I think the highscore list
was shared.

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

>> Yes, having worked as one, I can see that. For me, the pleasure was
>> always in automation, and the quick feedback loops. I would work on a
>> piece of the infra-stack, automate as much as possible, and you can do
>> that in small cycles of days and weeks, instead of the endless bug
>> hunting the developers at one of my jobs did, in some kind of million+
>> line CAD software. I always got the feeling talking with them, that
>> their job would never end, and you would only see small,
>> micro-incremental improvements stretching over years.
>>
>> Mean while, I'd happily automate my systems, deployments, reports,
>> statistics etc. so yes, some kind of programming always was there during
>> my time as a linux/unix system administrator.
>
> I recognize all of the above. But I think there's an even stronger
> point for system administration back then. When I got introduced to
> UNIX systems, it was a time where there were UNIX users and people would
> still share the system. So UNIX administrators did programming that
> everyone around the system noticed. There were mailing lists, NNTP
> servers and IRC servers so that people living the same area could talk
> to on a daily basis. Getting online and seeing there were people online
> too was a joy.

Interesting point. Yes, I think there is a strong case for the system
administrator to have been put back into the closet. At many big
universities and companies, these types of services you mention, have
been outsourced and are purchased "as a service". The system
administrator only takes care of backend system, and probably the only
ones who do interact with him are the developers and/or devops people
(unless the system administrator is of course christened devops at that
company).

Of course there are retro-types who still enjoy email, mailinglists,
usenet, gopher and irc, but they are few and far in between. So I can
definitely see your point here.

> The web evolved and computers became cheap, so everyone got their own
> and that seems to have isolated everyone. Instead of talking to your
> neighbor, you'd then interact with a lot of people across the world.
> System administrators got buried. We only notice their presence now
> when things go completely wrong. Today, the new generation of
> programmers have not even heard of W. Richard Stevens. I have no idea
> how they understand the systems they use.

At the risk of disappointing you, I have no idea who Richard Stevens is.
;) In terms of collaboration, I think for me and my generation, there
were still shared spaces, but self-hosting at that time, on the internet
was out of reach for people who did not go to university. My start in
self-hosting was the humble BBS, and that was an excellent technology
for building a community that also had a local touch.

> You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
> but no, thanks. ``I have my own system.'' They see no fun in sharing
> in a UNIX system.

Really? I think you must meet more teenagers! I teach, and each class is
roughly divided into thirds. 1/3 don't know what to do in life, and just
sit there. Very tough for a teacher to motivate them. 1/3 at least want
to pass. They are not naturals, but fight through, and a few of them do
discover the passion. Then you have the students that create passion in
the teacher. The top 1/3 (actually I'd say probably closer to 15%-20%).
They take to the whole self-hosting, sysadmin culture like ducks to
water, they explore the packages, they setup their own servers, they
collaborate in teams, so the student who has Gbps internet at home sets
up a server (or laptop) that the others all login to, they create their
own netflix, their own spotify, they play around with nextcloud creating
their own OneDrive and collaboration services.

I still remember one student who came to me 10 months after he started
saying that learning the terminal was the single best thing he ever
learned about computers. All his life, he had pointed and clicked, and
he never realized he could be that efficient and achieve all those
things (his own netflix, spotify etc.) with free software and linux.

So I think there is still a movement, and lots of interest, but I think
that there is perhaps not enough people teaching these things.

What I see in a lot of schools, is plenty of Azure and AWS consultants,
lobbying for the schools dropping linux and moving to "serverless", but
there is hope! I teach the opposite, so there's at least one person
fighting that trend. ;)

Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> writes:

> You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
> but no, thanks. ``I have my own system.'' They see no fun in sharing
> in a UNIX system.

Why not mesh up Peernixens instead of joining Pubnixens? Federating
with digital neighbours. So most of your stuff would stay at home and
only what you want to publish appears somewhere else. Maybe limit this
to SMTP and NNTP in the beginning and allow MIME posts in some
hierarchies. A safe backbone[0] would take some stress from all the
other protocols, so none of them would need to have SSL/TLS baked in.
In such a context mail would be a lightweight service again.

____________

0: SSH? TINC? Tor hidden services? ...

--
thejuicemedia
Honest Government Ad | 🇯🇵 Japan v. Paul Watson 🐋
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqzOAyXSJMI>

D <nospam@example.net> wrote at 09:56 this Saturday (GMT):
>
>
> On Fri, 30 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>
>> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>>
>>> On Tue, 27 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>>
>>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>>>
>>>>> On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:28:21 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> He described what awk did well, as well as what it didn't, and presented
>>>>>> a list of things that awk would need to acquire in order to take the
>>>>>> position of a reasonable alternative to C for systems programming tasks
>>>>>> on Unix systems.
>>>>>
>>>>> It was soon obsoleted by Perl, which did everything Awk did, just as
>>>>> concisely, and more besides.
>>>>
>>>> Funny---I gave up on Perl as soon as I discovered the existence of AWK.
>>
>> Actually it was after I read ``The AWK Programming Language''.
>>
>>> Sometimes less is more. It's aesthetics for sure, but for me
>>> personally, I do not like massive languages that try to do, and be,
>>> everything. For fun I thought about to have a look at Lua, or
>>> possibly, go.
>>
>> Lua is a nice language, but it's really small.
>>
>
> Ah! So maybe Lua would be my next hobby language to learn. =)

I learned some lua to make aseprite scripts, it is pretty neat but it is
a bit frustrating to learn (like how specifically instance functions
MUST be called with :, while static functions are called with .)

On the other hand, aseprite lua has actually worked consistently unlike
krita's python
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024 23:50:04 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:

> On the other hand, aseprite lua has actually worked consistently unlike
> krita's python

Isn’t it neat how all the major open-source content-creation apps offer a
Python API?

Easily the most extensive of them all has to be Blender: more extensive
even than the scripting API of any proprietary app.

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Stefan Ram wrote:

> Johanne Fairchild <jfairchild@tudado.org> wrote or quoted:
>> You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
>> but no, thanks. ``I have my own system.'' They see no fun in sharing
>> in a UNIX system.
>
> On some shell accounts here, "social commands" (like "finger",
> "who", etc.) have been disabled. It might have something to
> do with the "Datenschutz" ("privacy") laws.
>
> The admins also do not seem to use "motd" anymore, instead
> system information seems to be published on some web page.
>
> I had one free shell account about 20 years on a system where
> you could log in and play nethack. I think the highscore list
> was shared.
>

Nethack... now there's a game I haven't heard about in ages! I know for a
time, it was quite popular among my circle of acquaintances but it must
have been around the 90s somewhere.

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, candycanearter07 wrote:

> D <nospam@example.net> wrote at 09:56 this Saturday (GMT):
>>
>>
>> On Fri, 30 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>
>>> D <nospam@example.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 27 Aug 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> writes:
>>>>>
>>>>>> On Sun, 18 Aug 2024 00:28:21 -0000 (UTC), Ben Collver wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> He described what awk did well, as well as what it didn't, and presented
>>>>>>> a list of things that awk would need to acquire in order to take the
>>>>>>> position of a reasonable alternative to C for systems programming tasks
>>>>>>> on Unix systems.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It was soon obsoleted by Perl, which did everything Awk did, just as
>>>>>> concisely, and more besides.
>>>>>
>>>>> Funny---I gave up on Perl as soon as I discovered the existence of AWK.
>>>
>>> Actually it was after I read ``The AWK Programming Language''.
>>>
>>>> Sometimes less is more. It's aesthetics for sure, but for me
>>>> personally, I do not like massive languages that try to do, and be,
>>>> everything. For fun I thought about to have a look at Lua, or
>>>> possibly, go.
>>>
>>> Lua is a nice language, but it's really small.
>>>
>>
>> Ah! So maybe Lua would be my next hobby language to learn. =)
>
>
> I learned some lua to make aseprite scripts, it is pretty neat but it is
> a bit frustrating to learn (like how specifically instance functions
> MUST be called with :, while static functions are called with .)
>
> On the other hand, aseprite lua has actually worked consistently unlike
> krita's python
>

Interesting. Seems like every language has its quirks here and there. On
the other hand, since I'm not a professional, I never tend to hit the
really weird stuff, unless it's built in from the start.

Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid> wrote at 02:09 this Tuesday (GMT):
> On Mon, 2 Sep 2024 23:50:04 -0000 (UTC), candycanearter07 wrote:
>
>> On the other hand, aseprite lua has actually worked consistently unlike
>> krita's python
>
> Isn’t it neat how all the major open-source content-creation apps offer a
> Python API?
>
> Easily the most extensive of them all has to be Blender: more extensive
> even than the scripting API of any proprietary app.

Yeah, it is cool, but krita's was objectively broken (at least for me)
(on version 5.1.5) and I don't use blender much.
--
user <candycane> is generated from /dev/urandom