From: Mat Schaffer <schapht@...>
Date: 2006-08-02T13:00:28+09:00
Subject: Re: Help with complicated problems


On Aug 1, 2006, at 6:30 PM, Luke Kanies wrote:

> 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'm no expert, but from this web site you seem to really have your  
act together.  And the project looks really interesting.  So don't  
worry.  The only questions I've ever seen refused on this list are  
Rails questions, and sometimes people even answer those.

I haven't looked too much, but the initial guide is a little granular  
I think, so it'll take some time for most of us to absorb just what  
you're doing.  But it seems like you're talking about pulling server  
configuration from a centralized store.  Which sounds awesome to me.   
Can't wait to see how you interface with the permissions system.
-Mat