From: Luke Kanies <luke@...>
Date: 2006-08-02T07:30:46+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with complicated problems

James Britt wrote:
> 
> Welcome to the club.  I think that half the battle is getting a problem 
> into terms that can be expressed in code or pseudo code.

Yep.  I've been struggling with some low-level modeling problems in 
Puppet for months and months, and attempts I've made at describing the 
problem (e.g., 
https://reductivelabs.com/cgi-bin/puppet.cgi/wiki/ModelsAndImplementations) 
have not done the problem justice.

I've also found that I need some level of personal context to work on 
these kinds of problems; I can never jump directly into the problem but 
instead need to get an idea of whom I'm dealing with, which is much more 
difficult over email.

> The people on tis list, for the most part, are quite open and friendly. 
> So there is a decent tolerance for ill-phrased, off-the-wall questions.

I totally agree with that -- I've never seen a shortage of help.  I just 
hate throwing out vague questions, and my personal bar for required 
research is so high that I can't seem to ever finish the emails -- I 
almost didn't send the email that started this thread, in fact.

> (I think the main gripe many have here is when people ask for help 
> without demonstrating that they've done their own legwork.   I.e., "Dear 
> ruby-talk: Please do my homework.  And can you hurry?")

I'm a sysadmin by trade; I know all about that. :)

> Take a stab at it and see how people respond.
> 
> I like hearing how people reason about their code and projects, and I 
> believe their are thought idioms peculiar to working with Ruby.

I'll begin trying to do a better job of bringing these problems up on 
the list.  OSCON really made me realize how much I've let myself become 
isolated in the last couple of years, since I basically dropped out of 
the sysadmin community to work on Puppet.

> You might also consider the pragprog mailing list:
> 
> http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/community/

I didn't know that existed, I'll check it out.

>> 1 - http://reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet
>>
> Is there a Puppet Master?
> 
> http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0098143/

Never underestimate the allure of puns.  So far I've just got 
puppetmasterd (otherwise known as DJ Gipetto) and Puppetshow (the 
beginnins of a web app to interact with Puppet), but I'm sure there are 
more to come.

-- 
My favorite was a professor at a University I Used To Be Associated
With who claimed that our requirement of a non-alphabetic character in
our passwords was an abridgement of his freedom of speech.
                 -- Jacob Haller
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Luke Kanies | http://reductivelabs.com | http://madstop.com