Slashdot Mirror
Confessions of a SysAdmin
Mr.Fork writes "Scott Merrill from CrunchGear has a confession. He really, really hates computers. He writes: 'No, really, I hate them. I love the communications they facilitate, I love the conveniences they provide to my life, and I love the escapism they sometimes afford; but I actually hate the computers themselves. Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software.' Does his editorial speak to all of us in similar IT-related fields? Do we all silently hate the complexities and idiosyncrasies computers have, like error messages and UI designs that make no sense to the common user, which make our tech professions miserable?"
I do concur.
Which make our tech professions possible.
a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software
Sounds like Steve Jobs can claim another victim.
I love computers. I wouldn't have gotten into the field if I didn't love them. The ones I hate are the developers who write the shitty bug-ridden code that gets loaded onto computers that I have to support.
No, it doesn't relate to all of us. Not many of us, I'm sure, though I can't speak for everyone. Those are the complaints of someone who is mad -- and is in his right to be. We may not like pathetic GUI designs and restrictive software but, in the end, the computer still is that magical logical machine. That's my view -- is it yours?
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
Hate these f'ing things.
Hate people too.
I've been a programmer/software engineer for mumbly-mumbly years now, and I hate computers too. Preaching to the choir.
Everything you know is wrong, Just forget the words and sing along.
To be honest, they are "things", not people. Should we really consider loving "things"?
Open Standards Portal
I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
at the scary devil monastery.
Seriously. I don't think I've loved any computer as much as my Mac Pro, even though I built most of the others. It's an incredibly well built computer and makes you realize even more how much others are lacking.
I LOVE my computer
"Does his editorial speak to all of us in similar IT-related fields? Do we all silently hate the complexities and idiosyncrasies computers have, like error messages and UI designs that make no sense to the common user, which make our tech professions miserable?"
No. In fact, some of those things that he 'silently hates' are some of the main motivations I use to drive the software I develop. If I didn't genuinely love this stuff, I would NOT be in IT.
I don't so much hate them as I am burnt out on them. Only so many times can I reinstall, only so many times can I set something up, only so many times I can trash it all because it doesn't meet the needs. It's boring and mundane as shit, and that combined with the fact that I'm little more than a glorified janitor makes me keen to new careers.
I think I'll go be a fisherman.
(I would have said "Astronaut" but, well.... Thanks Osama!)
I just dont trust them.
I hate a lot of modern software (open source, closed source, whatever) because of the enormous, and often pointless complexities. I miss the joys of being a kid in front of my first 16k home computer, it was an adventure. I miss my first few years with *nix, when the operating system was populated with fine-tuned tools focused on accomplishing a single job and doing it well.
It's true that software and hardware often seems more like a balancing act. You try to find an equilibrium where you don't need cron jobs to stop the daemon that spontaneously combusts, or where the Windows roaming profile will properly synchronize with the server copy and not barf in a dozen different ways, and hope beyond hope that the patches you're getting won't cause more problems than they solve.
I think the reason, at least for me, is that there's little sense that I have control over how the systems work. Anything non-trivial involves so many separate processes, functions, modules and reliance on everything tying together that sometimes when I get something working, I'm more amazed than pleased.
But that's the job. You control what you can and try to mitigate what you can't.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I wish I had never turned a hobby into a profession. For the most part I enjoy what I do as a Sys Admin, but I used to come home from work and hop onto a mini programming project, or maybe i'll try some new software out.. switch from sendmail to postfix, just for the halibut.. stuff like that.
:(
Now I come home and I don't want to look at a computer or I just play some games. Kinda sad
If the UI is bad or the hardware is brittle, there's a person who made it that way. You can only improve computers by keeping people from making bad computers.
Everything would work perfectly fine if we just got rid of all the damn users.
From TFA
Well for one, copper pipe v3.5 is still backward compatible with copper pipe v2.1 and will be forward compatible with copper pipe v5.0 and beyond.
You know how it will fail and how it will age up to the point that it fails.
With computers, you simply do not know. Systems could fail tonight because of some date/time error. Patches next month can break your test machines. But if you don't install the patches, drive by banner ads infections will go up as crackers exploit the buffer overrun. And a million other possibilities.
I do not hate computers. I sometimes hate the developers who created the buggy code, or the company that couldn't be bothered to pay someone to create decent documentation, or the engineer who was pressured into signing off on "almost to spec" hardware, but computers overall? No.
I love tech. The computer is an awesome confluence of interesting tech bits. That's why I manage systems for a living.
Computers are the Toasters of the '00s'. Our users expect them to toast. If they don't toast, they call us.
I spend my day doing many many different computer tasks. I help users, I do some light coding, I work on web pages, email servers, file servers, domain servers, track minor issues with printer drivers or email clients, and whatever else. I can really relate to the article.
The issue is that a computer as an appliance isn't a reality in the everyday world, except to users. They want them to do exactly what they expect them to do, every time, without having a 'burnt part and an uncooked part'. For those of us that spend all day dealing with computers, we come to know that it doesn't work that way. Our problem is that we live in two different realities, and they are not yet compatible.
Of course, once they really do work like a refrigerator or a toaster or a coffee maker, I'll be out of a job. Most days I'm not sure that's a bad thing.
-- I really need to bleed off some of this
the deal with you *BSD is dead. that sorded, lube. This can l3ad to foster a gay and
Computers are fragile, unintuitive things...a hodge-podge of brittle hardware
Sounds like Steve Jobs can claim another victim.
Sounds more to me like he's about to get another customer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I am a software engineer and I like what I do. Unfortunately I do not like computers. It is the "thing" that "other" people use because it facilitates their life, but in reality, they do not give a damn about who or how someone put that box to work. We cannot tell to anyone that we did something amazing in software engineering or that we reduce the complexity of an algorithm without annoying them. In the end, nobody but us (computer scientists/engineers) is impressed by our work.
Wish I was good and enjoy working in another field :(
Scott Merrill sounds more "fragile and unintuitive" than my computer by far.
I love them because they feed me.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
I wanted that server to DIE. It was a long (17 hour) day. I peed on the motherboard.
What's with this Oprah shit?
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
By and large I hate computers when I have to work on them for a living. I am stuck having to use M$ software which has all of the joy of scrubbing a toilet. Being responsible for a Microsoft Windows Server can be akin to slashing my wrists. When I am home I love computing because I get to work on my open source operating systems which return the joy of computing back to the user. Instead of being forced to do things Microsoft's way, I am free to use my computer as I see fit with creative tools that let me see what goes on behind the scenes. I am free to do imaginative things with my computer which brings real joy. My intention is not to bash M$ but to show how openness can make something more fun and imaginative to use.
I don't.
None of the computers I deal with cause problems for me.
The Contractor who decides to reboot a server without informing us does. The user who deletes a file they needed. The Field tech who dropped his laptop in the mud. When the marketting team needs to send out 500 emails at once and the firewall stops it. Or when the seasonal temp sets up bitTorrent to download movies.
99% of the issues I've had to solve in the last year have not been because of computers themselves, but some of the ridiculous things people think they can just get away with. Albeit, it's not all their fault, (like marketting or the field tech), but that doesn't make it the computer's either.
It seems this guy's issues are ultimately mostly Windows-specific rather than anything specific to computers in general. He even takes time out to say how good OSX and Linux's package management is compared to Windows, yet he clearly still uses Windows as his primary OS.
Basically this guys problems are mostly self-inflicted, as he clearly knows about the alternatives yet still forces himself to keep going with the crappiest option.
Computers know just how you feel about them... and they also hate being anthropomorphized!
But seriously, it is scary how often my wife will complain to me "this doesn't work!" as she is clicking away on a web form, but when I go over and calmly click the submit button, it works perfectly. I honestly have no idea what she is doing wrong.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Can't say I blame him. If I had to deal with Wintel all day I would hate computers too. Switch to *NIX, more control, more sense, more power!
I seem to recall that way back when, the multics was designed to never be shut down. I guess one ran continuously for 14 years. More recently, I recall tandem, but do not know much about them, and i wonder if they are even still around. I have not hard of them this millenium.
We are so proud of our computers, but they have been so shoddy forever. I suppose you could argue it is not a mature industry, but you really really want to use say the auto industry as your shining example for the future of computers?
I think a lot of this stems from crap accounting principles. I think of the difficulty in writing down nominal capital values and the peculiar distinctions between the capital and expense.
were supposed to make our life easier?
Then they got monitized/corporatized,
and patented,
and copyrighted,
and we now alter our lives so as to work around crap software
and pray for the computer to not crash
Rick B.
I find that investing a lot of emotions into machines is about as intelligent as kicking yourself in the ass.
As far as things that don't make sense to the average user? Who's the average user? I work with about a thousand end users and I honestly don't think that any one design is going to be suitable for even a simple majority of them. People need to become more dynamic about how they use their tools.
As long as the material used to make computers is expensive, and as long as people are willing to pay NOTHING for a decent computer, things will always be this way... The companies manufacturing them will cut corners to get a product on the market rather than build it to be durable, long-lasting, intuitive, etc.. This results in my toaster outliving at least 2 or 3 of my computer systems. The demand to get the product out quickly has a lot to do with this as well.
That being said though... People put up with a lot when it comes to computers, whereas if my toaster was giving me error messages, was difficult to use, was breaking down every other week... Well I wouldn't stand for that.
People don't want to pay for high-priced computers, so we have to settle for below-grade products. We want things yesterday, so we again settle for unfinished products. We all seem to have a high tolerance for computer quirks, so we deal with below-standard products.
I swear though, if computers were perfect, well built, creative and easy-to-use machines, I'd be out of a job as an IT professional.... At east the tech support aspect anyway.
To comment on the article above, computers really are junk compared to what they SHOULD be. They should be so much more. They COULD be so much more... if only resources were limitless, copyrights and patent wars didn't exist, and money grew on trees.
After reading all the above comments, Im kind of surprised that I am in the minority in that I do admin work, and dont hate computers really in any way.
In my work life, its heavily sysadmin type of stuff. I dont hate any of our servers, or the software that runs on them. This is what happens when you make good choices.
In my personal life, I have a house-wide LAN with a mix of linux and Windows machines, depending on the purpose of them.Some are mostly used for viewing DVD's, some are for work-related priorities, And one is a touchscreen display in the kitchen with a barcode scanner on the fridge. Linux is used in place of windows to perform the task of a domain controller for the other windows machines. Roaming profiles are used on the more interactive devices, with network shares to both public and user-specific data.
Between both of these aspects, the computers themselves work exactly as they should. The software in my house that relates to my specific setup was made, or code level changes to other existing programs, by me.
My windows profiles never have any problems, and my linux server likewise in both its private facing side as well as its public IP range.
In a different time, the common phrase for such behavior was;
I don't hate computers, I am certainly not afraid of them, but I have been burned too many times to ever trust them completely (are you listing Toyota!).
I started with vacuum tubes and soldering irons and ended my career with routers, firewalls and server farms. I also wrote a lot of code on the way and did my share of Q.A. on others code too.
No, I don't hate them and I still like discovering new things that they will (and sometimes won't) do and new ways to do it
Computers -- even simple ones -- are complex systems, and since my original pedigree was in Systems Engineering the one thing that I learned early on was that whenever you THOUGHT you really understood all there was to know about ANY complex system was when it would take the opportunity to teach you something you never expected.
I love computers, but I hate the "opaque, restrictive software" that everyone, except for FOSS projects (for the most part), seems to make.
But when you actually find that perfect software, it is a beautiful thing.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
I spent almost 25 years analyzing and designing telephone and data networks and services. And never got comfortable talking on the telephone. Does that count?
From personal experience, while this sounds correct from a theoretical perspective, in practice it's a vicious lie.
one sys admin VS 8 phone system, 12 servers, 200+ users 24hrs (nursing homes open 24/7/365) a day gets old. Everything dies eventually and its always the admins fault!
... So are lots of things like physics, higher level mathematics (and even lower level for much of the population).
I agree much could be done to make computers more intuitive but this means offloading even control to tools that compile and make software that are many years (decades) away from being completed.
There are many research projects that aim to make software more modifiable and easy to use for end users but they are not beyond the research stage.
Presumably his company just upgraded to Windows 7 or Office 2007.
"I just want to insert a freakin' table!!! Where the hell is it. Let me switch to my other word window. FFS, do I really have to click twice to switch between instances of Word! The whole task bar is empty so why can't I have two friggin' icons for Word like XP!!! That's it, I'm going to kill myself!"
Computers are great, the endless possibilities and beautiful complexity built into a simple box.
At the same time I hate the things we do with them. All the brilliance just created so we can send pointless 140 character messages saying how we enjoyed our
porkchops for dinner (with nice apple sauce too!).
(I'm a sysadmin as well) I think IT sucks as a whole because it is a scientific field that was thrown to the wolves of commercialism. The computer is a petri dish in which great things can happen; but everything must work together in its entirety. Commercial entities refuse to work together, standards are open to interpretation or manipulation and you get an absolute mess. I think Apple is really aiming to achieve this harmony (I will set aside the fact that it is completely self-serving for now) but they have such a small corner of the market that they reduce their machines to a very small subset of what can be done in the name of just getting things to work effortlessly (and yes even OS/X is minimal in capability).
Everyone contributing to a single system must buy in to a common good of making that system work, and they just don't.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
Many times in fact. Go do something you enjoy doing. Only valid criterion for picking your career. Anything else will make you miserable. Stop trying to fix what you *think* is broken. It works just fine for me, mk?
I see every type of computer there is at my job supporting large systems in NYC. Every computer I personally owned rebooted itself, blue-screened or froze, leading me on a quest for something better. My bad experiences with PCs led me to explore Solaris on a UltraSparc system, fresh from ebay. Sun makes a great OS and great machines, but not too consumer oriented, limiting software to pretty much open source titles for individual computing purposes. Many people dismiss apple for their high prices, but since I switched to the mac five years ago, I love the computer again. It just works, no problems, drag and drop installs and a very friendly user interface. With the OCZ Vertex solid state upgrade for the disk, the computer never makes me wait for anything. Bootup is 30 secs from button-press to desktop. Shutdown is 2 sec. Apps open instantly. Windows runs perfectly in bootcamp or Fusion (vmware). All in a 64-bit hardware and software system. What drives me crazy with computers is a long list, so here goes: - devices without a facility for firmware upgrade - manufactures that don't offer firmware updates for devices - Anyone that doesn't work/sell in the datacenter thinking they know anything about computers - DRM - non FOSS (GPL) licenses - People too stubborn to believe there is something better than the PC running Windows - people who don't realize they need to update the firmware in their GPS, cellphone, camera, picture frame, television, radio, mp3 player, car audio system, etc.
If well even in the open source you can hit developers weirdest ideas, agendas, and idiology, all is there, in the open,where everyone can see it, and probably commented around it if is weird or arbitrary. Is a system where you have all the tools to find how it works, how, and why. In closed source systems, in the other hand, you are a blind mouse in a cat's playground. If something don't work, or works in a weird way, you can only pray and hope for the best. That kind of stress don't help a lot to love computers, or at least, the ones that run that kind of systems.
Every time I told some luser not to put too much faith in computers, the response was almost always one of dismay and the usual comeback was always the same "how can someone in your field say that?", easy, I replied, as long as people expect far too much from these things and will not learn to plan for disasters I will have a job!
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
So, ever since family and friends found out I could help with arcane errors and problems with their Apple ][+ computers (did I mention I'm old? That was back in the early 80s) I've been standing between computers and users and trying to reconcile both to each other.
Eventually, this turned in to a great opportunity for me to help people with their use of current technology. Are computers and software packages irritating? You bet! But being in the middle position between the user and CPU has been something I've enjoyed for more than a decade.
Sure, I've been a developer and struggled directly with computers on one hand and produced software that unintentionally frustrated users on the other. But it's standing in the gap between the technology and humanity that I find myself the most valuable.
As long as computers and software suck there will be a need for people like me. And, as it turns out, people prefer to turn their problems over to other people -- not wizards, FAQs, etc. -- for assistance.
The trick is not considering users as the problem but oneself as a key to the solution.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
"Computer science is about computers as much as astronomy is about telescopes"
-- Sig down
As he's obviously never had to repair a Saab. Probably hasn't worked on any car older than 1996, either.
The 1994-89 Saab 900 requires you to take out about a dozen screws to drop the front shield and SEE the lower radiator hose. With great effort, you can now replace it. Replacing the alternator requires removing the front passenger tire and the inner fender, that thing that keeps crap from blowing into the engine compartment around the wheel. Replacing the serpentine belt requires this also. Let's not talk about the A/C lines. Or the SID unit. Or other whacko electronic stuff. And hers is a convertible, so there is the joy of tonneau cover motors, flap and lock motors, fifth bow, gutter leaks, and multiple trips to the dealer so he can use the TechII tool to adjust it. And the radio code if you disconnect the battery. And the dual positive battery cable that threads along the engine and costs $120+, and just disintegrates after a few years. I could go on for a while here...
My buddy's 2009 GMC truck requires you to remove the left battery AND TRAY to replace the headlamp, and the damned lamps blow quite a bit. It's a diesel. It has TWO batteries. Yes it does. The other one seems to be not in the way of much, so far.
My '95 Explorer isn't too bad to work on, but it's OBD-I. Can't go down to Pep Boys and get the check engine codes pulled. You have to get a test light, a jumper wire, and count flashes. Sweet. And that annoying squeak? Probably the cam sync shaft getting too dry and squealing. You have to remove the intake manifold to replace it. All this for a simple thing they could have move a few inches back and made accessible, eh?
Think computers are difficult? Wait till you put them in cars. My work buddy and his BMW that will not talk Bluetooth with his Android phone except on every third Tuesday that is not a waning moon.
I detest hardware any more also, and OS support is our punishment for just living, but there are worse things to do for a living. Unless you come to realize that your job is not to do easy things, it is to just do things.
Now, explain how much time ti will take and how much it will cost to the driver/user. They want it done NOW, and cheap.
Right.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I hate computers.
No you don't. You hate software. Computers themselves are just fine. Perhaps even operating systems are ok, even if not all that great.
What truly sucks is the user interface, combined with the operating system. If I see an email attachment labelled as snow white and 7 horny dwarfs, there's no god damn force on the face of the earth that's going to stop me from opening the attachment and trying to see what it contains. And why should there be? I just want to see a snow white fuck some 7 dwarfs, not to have my whole computer infected! The security model sucks. There's no excuse for that. OLPC's Sugar started along the right path. What the fuck is the rest of the desktop world waiting for? Do we really have to wait for Linux desktops to get the same amount of viruses as Windows until people finally wake up and do something about it? (Or am I being too optimistic to even think that someone's going to do something about it? Perhaps the Linux-world deserves the half-useless bloatware antivirus crap of Windows world.)
I've been reading Slashdot since '98 and am finally posting something. Personally, I can understand his hatred. I'm 29 now, and at 3 I got my first computer. (Mac 128k) At around 6 I got my first IBM PC. (Packard Bell) At 11 I started volunteering with a program at my school rebuilding donated PCs. With no manuals, swapping cards and guessing jumper settings was always fun. At 13 I started my first BBS. Unfortunately, about 2 weeks later the internet came to my town, I was not pleased. At 16, for the first time I made some money with computers. I reinstalled Windows for a friend of the family, made myself 20 bucks, was quite pleased. At 18 I started college for Network Administration. 4.0 GPA, top of my class, breezed through everything. Got a job writing Access databases for $18 an hour. (!!!) At 19 I was making over $100,000 a year, cash, with my own business. Networking small business, selling PCs and dumb terminals, wiring rich peoples houses in Boca Raton. Dropped out of college, found I didn't have a need for it. At 20, I had 2 businesses, 10 employees, and was the East Coast Tech Manager for a blooming digital photography company. I had to constantly raise prices to be able to make my appointments. I was charging $100 just to show up. Flying to New York twice a month just to go clubbing. Every night was a party, shopping sprees every few days, no money went unspent. Just before I hit 21, I gave the my work cell to a friend and joined the US Marine Corps. If I hadn't, my lifestyle would most likely have killed me. They gave me a job as a firefighter and that's what I've been doing since then. Sure, I'll help someone out from time to time. I ran an ISP in Afghanistan for about a year and a half for the 60 of us in the fire hall plus some neighbors. I built myself a gaming rig (never played anything on it but Spider Solitaire). I read about tech constantly, check Slashdot and Engadget at least 10 times a day. I've never looked back. Computers had been fun for me since I was in short pants. Working in the field, although profitable, sucked ALL the enjoyment out of it. I couldn't take the complaining and the stupid problems any more. I once drove 2 hours each way on a warranty call because the lady was pressing the floppy eject button to try and restart her computer. I hate my job now, much more than working in computers, but at least I can get some satisfaction from playing with my toys now. Tinkering is fun again. In my case, doing what I loved for a living turned out to be miserable. Like the author, I can honestly say I hated computers, and still hate them now. There is always something that doesn't work quite right, some little issue preventing me from doing just what I want to do. At least now, on my own time, I can try to figure out which of the 12 USB devices I have plugged in is causing them all to stop, or try to get the damn sound to come out of the right damn output for my Blu-Rays. I think we all get the thrill from the chase, and when your chasing the same stupid thing day in and day out you just get tired of it. Good on him if he goes and becomes a plumber. He'll probably hate that too, but maybe he'll get his love for computers back, and to me that makes it worth it.
Especially when your ability to use them results in a decent paycheck?
I would much rather have the people who hate computers just stay the hell away from them, while "me and mine" take advantage of their prejudice and earn a living.
Wherever You Go, There You Are
I am so so soooooooo liking that.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I don't really mind computers.
I do hate printers, though. All those stupid moving parts, paper that needs to get in and then get out, the heat, the toner... I swear it's all just waiting to fail!
"Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software."
Sir: I have worked with and used computers for almost 40 years. I have seen time and time again proof of your statement.
The brittleness of the hardware is getting worse in some respects ( crappy power OEM power supplies and cable connections ), but getting more robust in others (USB and SATA ).
but the most obsurd industry trend is the shipping of crappy half baked OS and productivity software, long before all the bugs have been worked out, hoping that the churning of sales will prop
the development effort up enough to siphon off huge profits.
Security is an absolute afterthought joke. I reinstalled XP a few days ago and had to apply over 175 patches. If this was any other mission critical application it would be the laughing stock
of the industry, instead of the standard.
(btw, I have also converted more than 25 vista users back to XP, and aside from one driver problem for a track pad, all the users have been estatic. )
When the problems get insurmountable, I tell the user to call a priest....
but always recommend that they get hardware service locally, so that they can see the face of the person repairing their computer:
"Hello, this is Christine...<male voice, with thick Indian accent>..."
"Are you sure your name is Christine, and you don't want to pull another one out of the hat?"
"Im not sure what you mean"
"Ahh...forget it."
Only now are we seeing computing start to reach its potential. And, of course, it's Apple that's bringing it to us. Applications that run on little devices held in your hand, applications that do the things you want done. The desktop computer has become a web-browsing device. An iPhone, iPad, and Apple laptop do much more than a PC. Why is that?
Best regards.
I don't have to read tfa at all. Every time I talk to a Windows admin it's, "I hate computers!"
Every time I talk to a hardcore *nix admin it's, "Look what I can do!!"
Yeah, some times it sucks. Some software sucks. Users suck. Whatever... Like the manifesto says, if a computer fucks up it's probably your fault. How can you not love that?
I've called myself a technophile luddite for years. I love online gaming, and the web and many of the things that computers facilitate but from a user perspective they are almost a total failure. To stay with the lame car meme...you almost have to be a mechanic to even drive one, and that is just plain SAD. Some day they will be really user friendly... :D
I always picture the Star Trek movie with Scotty trying to talk to the computer and the current day engineer, staring at him like he was a cow speaking latin
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
I always thought error messages were informative. I think the examples provided are interesting. Computers make perfect sense. They behave exactly as design and programmed.
Computers are too complex for you . Please use Apple products as they are designed for people just like you.
Computers don't fail. Components or errors in programming cause failures. Documentation for building a redundant system and implementing a backup plan is available on the interwebs.
Computers are not overwhelming, they are computers. They are diverse and complicated. If they weren't we would call them toasters. It is just like rocket science. We should all be glad you are not a brain surgeon.
I like computers. I like Windows, Linux, cracking DRM, and amber displays. I am very good at fixing them and I get paid well to do it. I like astounding users when I make the computers do what they want.
If computers were simple they wouldn't be able to do so many things.
I enjoy the automation and freedom to innovate, utilizing the myriad of open source software that's available and learning from the things I can see without an NDA. I enjoy not working with a black box. I'm guessing you haven't been doing it this way and can understand your exasperation.
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Then I learned a new term: polymath. Well, well, well. That fits me. Now how to make a living as a polymath without having to get a once in a century TV show on Discovery Channel (Adam Savage on Mythbusters is a polymath).
Yes, unfortunately this world most demands specialists. But if you find that boring, it's hard to find work as a generalist, or at least work with more variety.
My ideal would be several different part-time jobs that added up to at most one full-time job (instead of loading up above this in order to support a lifestyle).
See if you can turn one of your hobbies into paid work, and use the extra income to cut back on the hours in your main job.
...Software that behaves well and doesn't act like it owns the computer and doesn't step on all the other software. I've been trying to do it for twenty years, and it's clear no company is interested in paying for that kind of development. Welcome to the world of low-quality everything.
True. But it's ironic that unpolished software ends up costing more in terms of fixes, support costs, and discouraged users.
Apple realises that polish is usually more important than time-to-market. If only the Asian manufacturers put as much effort into design and testing as they put into making things fast & cheap.
That's your fault for being on the shit-receiving end. You should have gotten your comp sci degree and become a (proper, non-Web) developer.
What makes you look down your nose at web developers?
Do you know what I hate?
Printers.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
didn't you?
You had to turn this thread into an iPad thread.
Violence against women isn't funny. Whoever modded this "funny" should be ashamed of themselves.
Computers are more reliable than the software that runs on them, or the people that use them.
Computers can be used to enable people to do more and more every day.
However, in the corporate world they enable you to do less, just more of it.
It is the "systems" that are created, not to enable people, but to disable choice that are the problem.
Most aggravating calls to customer supports usually end in "Sorry, the system won't let me do that".
The computer itself would let you do anything you can tell it to (within the limits of the medium), they are the rock in the foundation, and for that I love them!
It is the non-hardware portion of the stack that is easier to hate. . .
I hate them too - or more precisely the kind of second and third-grade cruft that everyone thinks of as a computer. (Mac's not bad but they have their own quirks. Mostly better hardware though)
If I were paid for more than minimal wage and had a spot of spare time - I'd try to do something about it - at least in the open source world. (I've been studying chrome source lately... just in case I get time to try some of the fixes I want to do)
Silly little fragile things they are.
This man obviously chose the wrong career. I love computers, even all the bad stuff. I also love working with people, no matter how computer illiterate they are. Too many sysadmins hate people. That's a bad thing.
X86 actually has a marked advantage over RISC these days because its about 30% smaller in code size (less page faults and cache misses). All of the front-end complexity it introduces makes up at most 5% of the transistors of a modern CPU.
We paid the complexity penalty of X86 for a long time, until it was so far outstripped by the incredible complexity of modern CPUs that it stopped being a big deal.
He sounds more like a computer repairman.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
The article reads to me like he hates Windows operating systems, not computers generally.
But for some reason I my brain is wired for it. I love that there is always something new to learn. The way that everything connects and communicates the fact that there are multiple ways to do one job some being better than others and discussing with co-workers from around the world which solution is better. The thrill of being on the wire and bringing disaster back to normality. However I do believe I had more hair when i started better vision and a smaller waist line.
"Don't Panic!"
they haven't worked in the field long enough. All it takes to develop a different perspective is one twenty four hour work day and a supervisor who complains that his icons are misarranged on his desktop.
Get off my virtual lawn, you damned virtual kids!
people who don't realize they need to update the firmware in their ...radio...
I know that some day I'll need to update the firmwares in my radio, but for now they are all working OK. And they also glow :) But I think I should download new versions just so I can update when I need to because the download usually takes more than a week...
Of course I hate computers! I hate them so much that I spend my time, at work, writing ways to stop doing my job. There's only one glowing thing about this profession: cash. If it wasn't for the cash, I'd never be able to afford a stress free (post-work) lifestyle. Also, if I had a job I loved (and paid less), I wouldn't have nearly as much fun doing the activities I love. What fun is snowboarding, when you have a reason to not risk life and limb in the pursuit of freestyle tricks? Thanks computers. If it wasn't for you all being such horrible bitches, I wouldn't be okay with landing myself a long hospital stay.
Computers are fragile, unintuitive things...a hodge-podge of brittle hardware
Sounds like Steve Jobs can claim another victim.
Sounds more to me like he's about to get another customer.
And that (the video you linked to) is why the iPad is doing better than us Techno-geeks expected. Indeed, it is why the iPhone and the iMac are doing well.
Computers are mostly brittle - I had my main PC crash last night because of something to do with the graphics card - I still don't know what.
But this little old lady in that video with the iPad? Brilliant. She can get to use it right away - she does not need to understand drivers, or compatibility or any of the other crap that we deal with on a regular basis. As long as it does email, web, IM and facebook, that is all most people would ever want.
It is when we go beyond those basics that computers start to suck. Like my dealing with a pissy PBX, or a switch that I can't log into from some subnets...
The ipad gets rid of most of those problems (to a very large degree). I remember an old man coming up to me years ago when I worked at Staples selling computers (that was an awful job, but it was a start). He grabbed the mouse, and immediately picked it up in the air, and began waving it about to try to get the cursor to move on the screen. We don't think of it like this, but just using the mouse is a different skill. Using the ipad generally involves using skills that we already have gained outside computing - as can be demonstrated by this lady's use of the ipad.
Hopefully, computers begin to suck less - like the ipad. (Just without the DRM BS behind the scenes).
Nice try, Steve Jobs.
Perhaps mainstream computer manufacturers have over estimated the average human's capacity to learn.
I would say most people have the CAPACITY to learn to user computers pretty well.
But why should they? I have the capacity to be an expert on basketball or hockey, but no desire whatsoever. Similarly why should the vast majority of the populace who really does need a computing appliance have to deal in any way with all of the crap we put up with in computers today (even Macs!)
I don't think computers as we know them should or will go away, because there are enough people that need that truly general purpose computing device to make them worth continuing. But I also don't see why more of the general public should not be better served by the world of computers than they have been to date.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you think about it, anyone with the skill to use a mouse with the feet is actually more adept at computer control than you are I. As stated, they can keep hands on the keyboard at all times. I'm actually kind of jealous of them, not that I plan to engage on a mouse-foot program.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
like error messages and UI designs that make no sense to the common user
.
Wait.. are we REALLY saying there are error messages that the common user doesn't get confused by? Oh yea. The error messages such as
The system must reboot now
yea.. that one NEVER causes confusion to the consumer...
Defective Logic
I believe that computers such so much when it comes to handling errors (IMHO senseless error messages are just the most obvious point in that) because no model of the software running on a normal pc is exhibited to the OS. Programs and objects, even if you could abstract "macro" states of objects into a kind an state engine, can not exhibit their state in a meaningful way to the OS. If we would make the software more abstract or create ways software exhibits its state to the OS, the OScould provide for things like "rollback to a good application state", "tell at which user opration the error happened" (opposite to "tell which instruction caused an error").
Nowadays the OS may detect something has failed and give you a "wizard" which is seldom more than a help text with the option of running the procedure which just failed again.
Comic Louis CK put it best in his criticism of impatience and lack of appreciation for technology.
I'll acknowledge that it's partly deranged, but I love computers. I love solving errors, learning new languages, modding hardware, accessing networks, or relieving someone's stress over what is often an easy, though evasive solution. I enjoy the challenges, (I consult, develop, and support - and have enjoyed computers since my first, in 1981), and I love when they do what they're supposed to - which is _most_ of the time...
Hating idiot users is understandable. But being fairly sure there aren't any non-idiots on the planet, I always deal with my supervisor, and his malformed, icon-tangle-desktop with a dose of taoism.
Hatred for imperfect systems and needless complexity is obvious; computer-love is still inspired though... modern technology is one of the only everyday-accessible realms of wonder we have at this point in history.
I love computers, love helping users learn to use them better. I love the challenge of working technology.
I love it more than ever...as long as there are new toys to play with. I love getting a new shelf on our SAN and figuring out how to move datastores in vSphere around so I can delete and recreate some LUNs on the SAN to maximise disk space and/or IO. I love getting new hardware and seeing how much faster it runs some queries in Postgres. I don't love Mirapoint but I tolerate it. I also love getting paid very well including two good pay rises through the GFC. I'm looking forward to getting my RHCE now that RHEL6 is nearly out.
There is always so much to learn to keep myself in love as well.
No, I did not RTFA. I rarely do.
I use technology in order to hate it more properly. (Nam June Paik)
Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse delendam.
When you clearly are have a not understood anything and is stuck in a dead end career of client support. I think you have to accept the fact you are a loser and will not succeed in anything in your life.
- To understand recursion, we must first understand recursion -
Like nursing and completely unlike stock brokering, sysadmin-ing is a vocation. If you step into it for the wrong reasons you will eventually start hating it.
Without a vocation you simply cannot be arsed to trying to understand what you are administrating and your life will be reduced to clicking the GUIs. Much like described in the article.
However, with a vocation -which may come later- you will find it fascinating to build and set up systems to become very resilient and that respond better to hardware malfunction. You'll also find ways to reduce boring administration tasks.
Back in the days I was a UNIX sysadmin for a small cluster of systems with 200+ users. I started taking my job seriously, to understand in more and more details what of the soft and hardware. After several years I moved on to development/architecture/integration. Currently I design and implement large systems and my experiences with sysadmin make me want to produce administrable systems.
Take your existence to a next level. Every new day.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
"Computers are fragile, unintuitive things — a hodge-podge of brittle hardware and opaque, restrictive software".
Easy, stop using Windows. I used to think the same way you did, almost changed careers. Then I took a serious look into this whole *nix and FOSS thing, and never looked back.
Africans are world-renouned in their animal husbandry techniques... http://wntube.com/videos/2707/native-african-farming-techniques
Also, get it right: negress for the ones that get backslapped, nigger are the ones that don't have a job.
I have a calculator watch and a Motorolla C139 cell phone. If my watch gets smashed, I can always tell time on the cell phone. If the cell phone breaks then I can always get the time and do math on the watch.
If your N900 breaks, what will you do? What will you do? What will you do? Oh I see, you have time to visit the library now, but will you get there in time without a watch??
For me, the frustration is knowing PCs can be much smarter than they are. I get impatient having to deal with some crap, again, that should never have been a problem. I'd rather spend my time on more interesting problems.
For instance, thanks to design decisions from the early 1980s, PCs can still have trouble identifying and configuring hardware. It has gotten better over the years-- remember the bad old days before Plug and Play when you had to work out IRQ line conflicts yourself by setting jumpers? I had a 486 with a manual that listed a bunch of jumper settings for different memory sticks. It didn't have a listing for the particular configuration I had (2 sticks of 4MB each), so I extrapolated and hit on the correct setting on my 2nd guess. Then they got the picture in backwards on another bank of jumpers, so I had those all set the opposite of what I wanted. Took a while before I figured out why things didn't seem quite right. No, I really don't miss any of that.
Today, despite being thousands of times faster, it can still take a few long minutes to boot up. An Apple II could boot up a 3rd party DOS and be ready to go in 15 seconds. (Because of completely braindead sector placement and interleaving, the official DOS took 45 seconds to boot.) The OS still has to do a lot of time consuming probing to figure out what everything is. Uncommon now, but probes can still cause a PC to hang. Device manufacturers are still far too coy about the specifications of their hardware, though that too has been improving. Even NVidious might open up. Software, too, is quite messy. A 4th generation language or a cutting edge 3GL can be nice-- until you need to link to several C libraries. Or you could reinvent the wheel. Either way, it can get uglier if you also need to do ports.
I'd like to see a complete reboot of computing. A better architecture than this cruddy x86 stuff that has far too many obscure and mostly useless instructions and too few general purpose registers. Open source ROM programming, with a good system for devices to let the computer know about them. An OS and tool chain built around better programming languages than C, which is a fine language as far as it goes, but which has been improved on in many ways over the decades since it was introduced. Better methods to organize system libraries, so linking isn't such an ordeal. Makefiles shouldn't be a language apart, or necessary. Clear away all this legacy clutter that makes working with computers needlessly painful.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
They do what you tell them to do. They don't tell lies. They are unforgiving but it takes a human to make a computer fail.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
I completely agree. I said this exact thing to my girlfriend the other day, there's nothing to like about a computer. The things associated with it are a different matter though. AND I'm excluding gadgets. I fuc-ing love gadgets.
SysAdmin is merely in the "hate" phase of what is --as we all really know--a love-hate relationship.
It is a complex machine. Much more complex than other machines that all also do have problems.
I can see how Windows was and still is just a bit TOO stupid in many areas. However, overall, making it perfect for humans is less easy or financially interesting than making it perfect for more computer software. So the day where there's no more problems with Computers will likely be the day you're out of a job.
Of course if you only use certain features of a computer that are always more or less the same, I guess you could avoid some complexity and gain stability - works for the ever-declining number of jobs where businesses don't also compete in the IT sector yet. The iPad does that trick. Is it "the solution" to simply do more things like this? No. With reduced functionality, you will notice any of the other existing OS' will be very easy to use and much less problem-ridden. But it comes at the cost of humans not being able to do much with it. This is utter idiocy if you are competitive. A more flimsy but flexible tool could only be replaced by many sturdy inflexible tools, not one of them. So unless its viable for you to get half a dozen stable, purpose-bound devices, no dice!
"Fuck! Even in the future, nothing works!"
This is why sysadmins will always have work.
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I used to like computers a lot.. spent all my spare time with them. But now that they are my job (no, I'm not in IT - just need to use a computer all day) I've come to really not care any more. Something about having to sit in front of one all day removes all compulsion for me to boot up another when I get home..
I use Linux, it's not perfect, but most pieces fit together well. If I run into trouble, I can usually pinpoint it's cause pretty easily. Desktop software has been well integrated into the system, and integrating new stuff isn't black magic. The system tends not to give much surprises, and it's well behaved and logical, in the good old Unix tradition. It's as good as it can get without dumbing down the system so much that you can only do so many things with it.
The problem with well integrated systems like the iPhone, iPad and the like, it's that whenever you start going a little beyond the surface, all seems to be held together by scotch tape. People will usually end up coping with the limitations of third party software and never try to do anything beyond that, because it becomes too complex.
Windows has usually been like that, a sandbox to install third party software. Afterwards Microsoft has done mostly flawed attempts to allow some scripting and other functionality. But it's already bloated, already too late, too complex, to enterprisey.
iPad/iPhone are extremely locked down, although it can be made more open, and when they do, it will be much better than Windows, after all, it's based on Unix and follows it very closely.
Linux gets it right, relatively simple for an end user, but doesn't get in the way of advanced users and developers. It's simple enough for all it's audiences, robust, and logically designed. Most pieces are quite independent among themselves giving high flexibility. It improves and gets polished very quickly.
The computer is the operating system, and as long as it's Linux, it's fun and rewarding to work at it solving real problems in elegant ways, with sophisticated tools. I can't complain, I just have too much fun with Linux and computers, I love them, and I will probably die in front of a display.
will probably find *NIX even more annoying.
I'm not saying *NIX isn't a great platform, but there are aspects of it that the average person would struggle with.
Honestly, I can deal with the computers quite well, they do what they are programmed to do without emotion. What I can't stand is the a-hole users and management who expect IT to solve any and all of their problems, with no budget, no staff, and no respect - all while being overloaded with an endless number of projects.
I'm sorry you never learned excel in high school, but when I am in the smack in the middle of a project that can prevent our company from losing millions your vlookup question is just not a priority.
I don't get it. How could you hate computers and go in that field? I love computers and everything related to them. I don't find them fragile, broken, or a hodge-podge, rather, I find them fascinating.
Became a network administrator when I was 18. I had been digging into unix until 5am since the age of 16. I then went on to become a network analyst -- which means just the fun parts of network and infrastructure design. I'm now 25, and work as a consultant/contractor and I absolutely love my job, and still think it's the best ever. When I come home after a day of work, I still do what I do at work, but for fun. I never tire of it, or tire of computers. I collect exotic hardware, I set-up overly complex networks for shits and giggles, I dig deeper and deeper because I never tire of learning more subtle details about them.
I don't hate computers at all, I don't hate the concept. I hate shitty software that doesn't work as it should, or fails when it shouldn't.
I feel like I should say "Don't hate the player, hate the game", but that doesn't feel entirely accurate. I sometimes hate a workplace. I sometimes hate some software. I sometimes hate a particular aspect of my work (namely the buisness hierarchy and horrible office politics I have to play into). But I don't see how I could stop finding computers fascinating and suddendly dislike them. Feels like you're not in the right field to me.
I've been using FreeBSD and Linux for nearly 12 years now, I'm a sysadmin and I currently use Windows 7 and XP on my laptop & netbook. You'll learn one day that just because you can make life difficult for yourself by using something like Ubuntu, it doesn't mean you must make life difficult for yourself.
"News for nerds. Stuff that matters."?
More like "Whiny nerds. Inconsequential personal preferences."
Seriously. Who gives a **** whether some random Sys Admin likes his job. Lots of people make poor career choices. So grow a pair, and switch to job that you like.
"That's the thing about people who think they hate computers. What they really hate are lousy programmers." — Larry Niven
JJ
"Oh really? Mr Fancy Pants "Oooh I'm a sys admin, look at me enter commands on a command line console because I don't know how to flip electrons with a laser pen." REAL Lunix users don't use command lines, we actually short electrodes in order to program in raw machine code to download the packages we want. Also we don't use packages, we write the applications from scratch.
BTW, you may have heard of this thing called a GUI. Most distributions of GNU/Linux have one called GNOME available. I've heard, *gasp*, people use this to install applications. In a way that, staggeringly, is easier than the majority of modern Mac apps (when did this stupid crap of having to run installers to install apps under Mac OS come from anyway? You used to be able to just drag the folder to your hard drive), and infinitely easier than the Windows "way" of doing it." - by squiggleslash (241428)
on Friday April 23, @11:22PM (#31964228) Homepage
You talk a lot, but show us a program you've built that's gui, ok? Show us one online, that you've built, yourself, from scratch. Why do I get the feeling that Mr. big talker hasn't done a single GUI program himself, and especially one that's gotten really good reviews from reputable sources, in his life??