Systems vs. Users

[Jonathan Hutchins]

I see an error in this RedHat argument that I see far to often in real 
life.

Jason proclaims himself a "competent end-user", and then confounds that 
skill level with the ability to make serious changes in the system he's 
using (installing graphics drivers).

One of the biggest problems IT had getting used to having PC's around 
was just this error.  Anybody could work on a PC because it wasn't 
a "real computer".  So anybody did.  At first it worked, because early 
adopters tended to have the skills necessary to learn how to work on 
the systems involved.

PC's have grown more complex over the years, as have the tasks asked of 
them.  The second worst hold-outs were the engineers, who figured they 
ought to be able to work on their own PC's because they were engineers, 
weren't they?  I remember when the head of a large local engineering 
company (now part of GE) declared this - that it had gotten to the 
point where it required a trained specialist to work on the system 
level, installing hardware and serious software.

At the point where average companies began hiring trained specialists 
who knew how to work on PC systems, PC's experienced a major surge 
inproductivity.

The other confusion is that programming skill, knowledge, and 
experience somehow magically confers the capability to understand and 
work on a system level.  While it can happen, in the case of someone 
who actually works with the sytem, the two skills usually have nearly 
nothing to do with each other.  Any system tech who has had to try to 
convince a developer that his installer can't write to the boot track 
knows this.

Good companies provide their development teams with systems support 
staff who maintain the computers and install and configure the software 
for them.  (These people are avatars of compassion and patience.)  
Companies that don't eventually find that the developers are 
essentially living in a chaotic jungle of their own creation and are 
unable to relate to the actual working desktop environment or produce 
useful code.

The point being that knowing how to install and run Quake on a Windows 
box doesn't mean you should be able to maintain and modify the 
operating system, even if you are an engineer or a programmer.

You can learn, but you can't expect it to just happen.

---------------------------------------------------
This mail sent through tarcanfel's horde/imp system