P.S. I would have thought your statements more appropriate to Perl than Python:
I came to python after using perl for over 10 years - and have never looked back. Hands down it can do everything perl can do - while providing clear, readable code that is consistent from one developer to the next...you have to really dig down into the bowls of python to create anything that would make me scratch my head - whereas that is trivial to accomplish with perl - and was the cause of many headaches over the years when needing to work with multiple developers' code. I debugged my last hanging curly brace/missing semicolon long ago.
Or worse: they simply bypass you:
A: We need your widget X to be modified to produce wingnut Y by March.
B: I can't commit to that now; I need to work up the design and give you a good estimate.
A: Never mind. We'll go with Team C and their widget Z - they assure us they can have it done well before March (the implication being they are more responsive/better than us - never mind that the new widget isn't integrated with our network or systems - and they are going to need us to do the integration work anyway because they know nothing about the systems etc..)
At this point the PMs and Program Managers break into song:
I want a feast I want a bean feast Cream buns and doughnuts and fruitcake with no nuts so good you could go nuts. No, now! I want a ball I want a party Pink macaroons and a million balloons and performing baboons and Give it to me now. I want the world, I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket It's my bar of chocolate Give it to me now! I want today I want tomorrow I want to wear them like braids in my hair and I don't want to share them I want a party with roomfuls of laughter Ten thousand ton of ice cream And if I don't get the things I am after I'm going to scream! I want the works, I want the whole works! Presents and prizes and sweets and surprises in all shapes and sizes, And now! Don't care how I want it now! Don't care how I want it now!
From what I've learned in the last three companies I worked for that used agile, agile means that an ungodly amount of time is spent in meetings and constant, meaningless record-keeping. God, I hate agile. It gets in the way of doing good, timely work.
They should probably start off by reading the Agile Manifesto...where it talks about the values of agile development - one of which is to value Working software over comprehensive documentation. Sounds like they have the wrong focus.
Mediocrity is not uncommon, and there are way too many people in the development end of things that shouldn't be. I've been dealing with these clowns for almost 20 years now - and this very topic is what is driving me to retire early and do something else with my time, instead of the endless death marches to nowhere.
But fleeing from Linux to BSD doesn't solve the problem, that's just running away from it. If the major BSD distros decided to incorporate a systemd-like system then what?
Then it will be time to fork Linus...
J/K
However, maybe someone should give the Linux POSIX APIs some loving - and implement a new improved non-systemd distro, and add good support for features/apps that were lost in the 'Great Systemd Landrush of 2014' (basically fork projects that decide only to support systemd - if they are something we gotta have on BSD and Linux).
The one thing I think we can depend upon is the Linux Kernel itself...everything else is questionable given limited resources; if you care about having a given feature that is threatened - put your money/sweat where your mouth is - and support it.
I would like to know what kind of administration you are doing through a 'flash web gui'? Isn't command line sufficient for admin work? Or am I missing the point in some (not so) subtle way?
Interestingly enough, as I wrote the above, the flash player in Chrome decided to die...heh.
There are people who think that advising citizens to devolve into consumers is a dubious proposition.
Devolve? I'm still waiting for them to evolve into citizens.
Who is going to pay for all of that fiber - and associated changes to the network to allow it to go the last mile (so far, the only fiber we've seen to the home is in very small enclaves of people who can afford premium services anyway)?
If you believe that should reside in the corporate realm, then how do you as a corporation turn a profit while also investing in a universal fiber network?
If you believe it should be in the government realm - how do you get politicians to support fund allocations for it - and who does the money go to (municipalities, the aforementioned corporations, someone else)?
For those who think SysVinit style init systems is what Linux should be using the next 30 years, there is Slackware. It is a nice general purpose distro that is very traditional. So nobody is forced to use systemd if they don't want to.
If I use KDE - which I do - then packages for that become unavailable at some point in Slackware given the above. That means I will be forced to use systemd if I want to continue using KDE; which also means I will have to change distributions, assuming Slackware remains systemd free, as well.
Not trivial. Not easy. Not freedom of choice.
It simply solve a lot of real world problems and makes life easier for both upstream developers, distro makers and end users.
That is simply a lie.
... Keeping SysV init is an easy choice for a distro that does care about the needs of sysadmins.
There; fixed that for you. Your statement made a very big assumption - not borne out by statements I've read here by system admins.
It's like being told that if you use bash, you must use emacs.
I thought that was a given?
While, in principle I agree with you (I learned at a university that had several MIT PHDs in the computer science department - one of which was the head of the department - and later in my career when interviewing new candidates, and working with people from what I will call 'sub standard' programs - I saw first hand that all CS degrees were not equal) - I also realize that the people coming from the top university are going to gravitate to where the money is - meaning if you are a small company, or in a company that can't attract the top talent you will be stuck with what you can get.
This situation isn't bound to change, so how do we deal with this? I think the solution should be multifold and systematic to have possibility of success:
1. Every programmer shouldn't have to be a system developer; partition your developers into two camps: a very small group of system developers (for OS, building development tools, and embedded work as needed), and a very large group of what I will call 'application' developers (for applications end users will touch).
2. Limit the tools your Application Developers have available to them. They shouldn't be able to shoot themselves, or their users, in the foot.
3. Focus your System Developers on building tools and libraries for selected application class languages that do not allow Application Developers to reinvent the wheel for things that they shouldn't be - such as memory management and security (the aforementioned 'loaded guns'). Enforce standards for access to and use of the tools by the Application Developer group.
4. To avoid having developers working on software that will only benefit one user - provide safe tools to allow end users to build their own simple applications (e.g. Hypercard - or other paradigms that are appropriate, above and beyond spreadsheets and word processing software). Once an application created in this way becomes popular enough - you have to option of translating it through your application developer team...or leave it as is. If you were smart when you built your (hypercard-like) tool - you allowed it be integrated with, or translated to other systems in safe ways - so that it can be shared with minimal impact/workload.
If we don't find a way to something like what I describe, we will continue to suffer as we keep expecting all CS graduates/programmers to be equal. HR and Execs don't like this because they want all developers to be interchangeable widgets...but reality does not bend to policy.
I had the pleasure of access to and use of an Amiga 1000 in '86. It hosted many of my firsts in computing:
First use of a graphical interface
First use of virtualization (hosted an IBM DOS virtual environment in a window - used for running and building DOS applications for IBM PC - the Amiga OS was perfect for this - since it virtualized it's own components as well)
First filled polygon video game (3D up to that point was wireframe)
First real multimedia PC used
First use of a PC with a multitasking operating system
First use of full featured embedded scripting capabilities in an operating system (MS DOS batch processing doesn't count)
After using the Amiga, nothing that followed really surprised me - but most commercial solutions I found limiting in one way or another (e.g. Windows 3.1 lack of preemptive multitasking).
In '95 was looking at OS2 Warp as a better alternative to Windows '95 [I wanted something that had tools I could quickly be productive with; I spent many hours with the Win32 API bible with little to show for it - and J++ just was a fail from an interoperability standpoint] - when I was introduced to Linux - which had what was missing, and dovetailed nicely with my studies at the university - (the computer science lab was well equipped with Sun Solaris machines - and we did all of our development coursework on Unix as a result - and when I got Slackware 2.3 up and running - I started dialing in my projects from home - my first exposure to telecommuting).
The biggest lesson I took from my experience with the Amiga is that being productive with a computer should be easy - and if it isn't then you should look somewhere else until you find it. It may seem counterintuitive given that I ended up with one of the most difficult distros to install at the time. Having a built-in tool set in the form of command line scripting, and other extension languages, in addition to the core system programming languages was key to my own efficiency in getting things done. That being said - today, even for someone who knows how to program, finding easier/quicker ways to get work done is valuable. Everyone is not a computer scientist - and shouldn't have to be to make working tools for themselves easily. While projects have addressed subsets in this arena (spreadsheets, wordprocessing etc), no one has address the fundamental problem of creating a malleable tool for general purpose use - that I am aware of.
IT departments in large companies, and the shrink-wrapped software companies do a good job of accomplishing large projects and particular popular niches (standard office suites) - but they are horrible when addressing the unique needs of the individual. That's where something like hypercard would find a home.
IF I HAD A MINE SHAFT, I don't think I would just abandon it. There's got to be a better way. -- Jack Handley, The New Mexican, 1988.