Beefy Boxes and Bandwidth Generously Provided by pair Networks
P is for Practical
 
PerlMonks  

Re: "Magic tools" that take the fun away

by Discipulus (Canon)
on Apr 09, 2021 at 10:34 UTC ( [id://11131049]=note: print w/replies, xml ) Need Help??


in reply to "Magic tools" that take the fun away

Hello hrcerq and welcome to the monastery and to the wonderful world of perl!

> Recently I've found ..

Glad of someone profit of my messy bibliotheca!

You mention: art, beauty and fun. These are all terms related to the the human being as central point of view. I have the same idea and I consider programming, in the way we like it, as an humanistic art, not only an art. When the human is in the center of our perspective there is room for creativity and happiness.

Starting from Knuth's article you mentioned, I've written a mini serie (unfinished): Antiquitates - liber I - In memoriam Robert M. Pirsig and Antiquitates - liber II - De trivio atque quadrivio are available atm.

You can profit also the reading of a recent thread: Why Perl in 2020.

> IT managers often see them ("magic tools") as a means "not to depend too much on programmers". It's laughable...

I found this not laughable at all :)

While we can still have an humanistic approach to IT and programming, the business and therfore managers have a moneycentric approach and to not depend too much (and one day to not depend at all) on programmers is a key point in their strategy.

"Magic Tools" must be run by an idiot formed to accomplish boring tasks. If this worker is unpleasant or costs too much, they can replace them with another one with easy. In another corner of the world where salaries are risible? Even better!

In this way I also see the declining of Perl: is too humanistic. Not a suitable tool for robot-workers.

Higher the complexity of tools, the abstraction, harder to see the whole picture. If someone still has a vague idea of the whole picture they will be seen as wizards in some years.

My hope is that the above schema will collapse on itself oneday, all togheter. Then a good old sysadmin, perl outfitted, will be valuable as gold.

L*

There are no rules, there are no thumbs..
Reinvent the wheel, then learn The Wheel; may be one day you reinvent one of THE WHEELS.

Replies are listed 'Best First'.
Re^2: "Magic tools" that take the fun away
by hrcerq (Scribe) on Apr 09, 2021 at 18:18 UTC

    Thank you, Discipulus. I don't think your bibliotheca to be messy, but even if it is, it's a great resource, and as my spare time allows me, I'll dive deeper there.

    Also, these other meditations you point out are very much related to the subject. Really appreciated.

    > I found this not laughable at all :)

    My point here is that even if you use a "no-code" solution, you depend on the programmers who maintain the magic tool behind that. So, in the of the day, you'd be just transferring your dependance to a programmer that is more distant and less accessible.

      "Magic tools" are great for streamlining repetitive, error-prone work. And there's no doubt that "configuration management" across a big stable of servers is near the top of that list. But, you'd better be sure that you know at all times what is really going on. It is very, very easy to make an "innocent" mistake with these power-tools that instantly has far-flung implications. For instance, it's absolutely necessary that you put the configuration files under git version-control, and that you very-carefully track them in your change management system.

Log In?
Username:
Password:

What's my password?
Create A New User
Domain Nodelet?
Node Status?
node history
Node Type: note [id://11131049]
help
Chatterbox?
and the web crawler heard nothing...

How do I use this?Last hourOther CB clients
Other Users?
Others rifling through the Monastery: (5)
As of 2024-03-28 23:04 GMT
Sections?
Information?
Find Nodes?
Leftovers?
    Voting Booth?

    No recent polls found