On 16/12/2011 09:49, Mark Burgess wrote: > > And you can sprinkle parameters where you want for *clarity of > communication*, not for programming necessity. > > As a teacher of many years I will share an experience that sounds > arrogant but which is very true: people are rarely the best judge of > what is good for them unless they have thought very, very carefully > about everything. Most of us react instantly to what looks nice right > now and don't think about the wider implications. That is my job: "CTO" > = "Clear Thinking Organizer". So we need to encourage a shift away from > programming towards knowledge management. > > A programmer thinks mainly about him/herself when writing code, but the > code in CFEngine is documentation about the system first and foremost. > It is meant for the long term to assist understanding. Reducing the > complexity of information through patterns is a key strategy for this, > and it has been my intention to make it hard for people to fall back > into bad practices. That is always a sensitive issue, but it has always > been my intention to challenge people to think differently and "better" > about issues. > > This does not mean that the discussion is over, as there are plenty of > things we can do to make CFEngine 3 even simpler to understand. I hope > to come back with something on this in the new year. > > hope this explains my thinking a little better > > Mark > I'm a programmer by trade, so I'm always tempted by some sugar in the syntax that would make my life easier; and I easily forget that it might give nightmare to people coming after me. Thank you Mark for reminding that we are dealing here with Configuration Management, and that things should always remain clear.
Regards Nicolas _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
