From: "André A. Gomes" <andremegafone@gmail.com>
To: Matt <matt@excalamus.com>
Cc: guix-devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>, calcium <calcium@disroot.org>
Subject: Re: Guix Documentation Meetup
Date: Mon, 10 Jan 2022 19:05:30 +0300 [thread overview]
Message-ID: <87czkzo9th.fsf@gmail.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <17e4437d4b3.ed52eea353456.7978305425404430081@excalamus.com> (matt@excalamus.com's message of "Mon, 10 Jan 2022 08:40:16 -0500")
Matt <matt@excalamus.com> writes:
> > I'm not connected with Guix with any way - a mere enthusiast and
> > observer.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean. Being excited about something and taking
> the time to observe it, like listening to music, is a connection,
> right?
I mentioned because ultimately the final word isn't mine :)
> I'm curious, what makes you feel not connected with Guix?
I feel connected "philosophically" as a (basic) user, but not as a
contributor. Guix, by itself, is a complex system. Honestly, I suck at
using Guile in a project of this scale (no, I don't think the
documentation is poor). I have some understanding in Emacs and
slime/common lisp systems, but I still need to dive into geiser. There
are difficulties of other sorts as well. This is a Unix system and that
fact alone requires knowledge and experience. I assume that most core
contributors are/were involved in other efforts such as Debian, Arch,
Gentoo, etc. Besides experience in "system administration" and HPC.
I don't know how many people in the community have
non-CS/Unix/programming backgrounds so I share some personal thoughts
below. It's not that I want to share my life, but it might resonate
with the experiences of others.
My background is in theoretical physics and pure maths. I never cared
about computers or computation, until I had to find a job circa 2018. I
landed on a wind energy company which owns a supercomputer (running
GNU/Linux of course), and without me realising, I was being "forced" to
be a software developer. I had to learn a lot and fast. Soon, I
understood that the bottleneck on the success of a given project isn't
in the lack of domain-specific/scientific knowledge, but in the lack of
robust (software) tools and "software knowledge" in general. Most
"scientists" think: "these IT/programmers can't do their work properly".
This division ("scientists" and "programmers") is toxic. Yes, it's VERY
hard to find people who do both well. Guix a step towards tearing this
wall apart for good. It's not by chance that Guix has a strong presence
on HPC. (Yes, it's hell to depend on an admin to install stuff). It's
interesting to note that the effort comes from the "programmers" side.
I think the bottleneck on Guix's world domination is precisely because
"scientists" generally make little effort in that regard. It's hard to
make "non-sexy" things look sexy. Go and tell a "data-scientist" about
reproducible builds. Good luck.
It's ok if things are overwhelming and hard. Things eventually click
and start to make sense.
--
André A. Gomes
"Free Thought, Free World"
next prev parent reply other threads:[~2022-01-10 16:09 UTC|newest]
Thread overview: 56+ messages / expand[flat|nested] mbox.gz Atom feed top
[not found] <mailman.34870.1641617883.18145.guix-devel@gnu.org>
2022-01-08 8:42 ` Guix Documentation Meetup calcium
2022-01-08 11:35 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-01-08 11:49 ` calcium
2022-01-08 16:24 ` Matt
2022-01-08 18:58 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-01-08 19:06 ` Leo Famulari
2022-01-09 21:12 ` Matt
2022-01-10 9:05 ` André A. Gomes
2022-01-10 13:40 ` Matt
2022-01-10 16:05 ` André A. Gomes [this message]
2022-01-11 18:45 ` Matt
2022-01-12 18:41 ` Leo Famulari
2022-01-13 0:04 ` Matt
2022-01-10 15:21 ` Planet of Guix-related posts? zimoun
2022-01-11 13:38 ` Matt
2022-01-12 1:40 ` Matt
2022-01-12 5:17 ` André A. Gomes
2022-01-12 8:30 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-01-12 9:23 ` Oliver Propst
2022-01-12 8:36 ` Ricardo Wurmus
2022-01-13 0:22 ` Guix Documentation Meetup Leo Famulari
2022-01-13 13:15 ` ilmu
2022-01-08 13:41 ` Matt
2022-01-08 14:09 ` Julien Lepiller
2022-01-08 14:54 ` Matt
2022-01-08 14:39 ` Josselin Poiret
2022-03-10 17:02 Raghav Gururajan
2022-03-10 17:11 ` Raghav Gururajan
-- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2022-01-08 4:52 Matt
2022-01-10 9:47 ` Oliver Propst
2022-01-10 13:15 ` Matt
2022-01-11 16:24 ` jgart
2022-01-12 0:59 ` Matt
2022-01-12 1:20 ` jgart
2022-01-12 2:57 ` Matt
2022-01-12 3:10 ` Matt
2021-12-13 13:45 Blake Shaw
2021-12-13 15:55 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2021-12-13 12:41 Blake Shaw
2021-12-13 12:33 Blake Shaw
2021-12-15 17:37 ` Blake Shaw
2021-12-15 19:12 ` zimoun
2021-12-15 22:37 ` jgart
2021-12-11 1:42 Blake Shaw
2021-12-10 22:40 Blake Shaw
2021-12-10 23:18 ` Ryan Prior
2021-12-11 18:55 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
[not found] ` <87lf0q2m7n.fsf@nonconstructivism.com>
2021-12-13 3:50 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2021-12-30 21:52 ` adriano
2022-01-06 15:58 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2021-12-13 8:29 ` zimoun
2021-12-14 16:01 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2021-12-14 17:38 ` Luis Felipe
2021-12-14 17:52 ` Katherine Cox-Buday
2021-12-21 6:41 ` adriano
2021-12-09 9:28 jgart
Reply instructions:
You may reply publicly to this message via plain-text email
using any one of the following methods:
* Save the following mbox file, import it into your mail client,
and reply-to-all from there: mbox
Avoid top-posting and favor interleaved quoting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posting_style#Interleaved_style
List information: https://guix.gnu.org/
* Reply using the --to, --cc, and --in-reply-to
switches of git-send-email(1):
git send-email \
--in-reply-to=87czkzo9th.fsf@gmail.com \
--to=andremegafone@gmail.com \
--cc=calcium@disroot.org \
--cc=guix-devel@gnu.org \
--cc=matt@excalamus.com \
/path/to/YOUR_REPLY
https://kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-send-email.html
* If your mail client supports setting the In-Reply-To header
via mailto: links, try the mailto: link
Be sure your reply has a Subject: header at the top and a blank line
before the message body.
Code repositories for project(s) associated with this public inbox
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git
This is a public inbox, see mirroring instructions
for how to clone and mirror all data and code used for this inbox;
as well as URLs for read-only IMAP folder(s) and NNTP newsgroup(s).