I am referring to Bill Oliver's essay that appeared under the "Fedora = "the darker side of the Internet?"" thread, just recently.
I just wanted to say how wonderfully well-expressed this essay was. It is widely applicable and should be required reading for "gurus" in ever-so-many areas. (There are many contributors to the R-help mailing list to which I subscribe who would benefit from taking this essay to heart.)
I hope that Harald Reindl reads it and takes it to heart. I have no patience with those on this list who slang off at Harald. He is a brilliant guy and provides a great service to the Fedora community. But he would be even more useful to the community if he absorbed Bill Oliver's advice.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
On 10/11/2013 05:10 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
I am referring to Bill Oliver's essay that appeared under the "Fedora = "the darker side of the Internet?"" thread, just recently.
I just wanted to say how wonderfully well-expressed this essay was. It is widely applicable and should be required reading for "gurus" in ever-so-many areas. (There are many contributors to the R-help mailing list to which I subscribe who would benefit from taking this essay to heart.)
I hope that Harald Reindl reads it and takes it to heart. I have no patience with those on this list who slang off at Harald. He is a brilliant guy and provides a great service to the Fedora community. But he would be even more useful to the community if he absorbed Bill Oliver's advice.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
Rolf: Thanks for pointing out Bill's message. It's something everyone should read.
As a graduate student, I was required to teach. It took a number of years to figure it out, but I did figure out why I was a lousy teacher. Everything I did in class reflected the attitude "It's perfectly clear to me; what the f***'s wrong with you?"
On 10/13/13 03:40, Steven Stern wrote:
<SNIP>
Rolf: Thanks for pointing out Bill's message. It's something everyone should read.
As a graduate student, I was required to teach. It took a number of years to figure it out, but I did figure out why I was a lousy teacher. Everything I did in class reflected the attitude "It's perfectly clear to me; what the f***'s wrong with you?"
An unfortunately ubiquitous attitude. I think we all share it to some extent. The trick, it seems to me, is to become aware that we are exhibiting that attitude *while* we are exhibiting it. I often "get that way", realize afterwards how I've been carrying on, and regret it. But then it's too late.
cheers,
Rolf
Apologies for top post but what is the url for Bills essay please? Roger
On 10/11/2013 05:10 PM, Rolf Turner wrote:
I am referring to Bill Oliver's essay that appeared under the "Fedora = "the darker side of the Internet?"" thread, just recently.
I just wanted to say how wonderfully well-expressed this essay was. It is widely applicable and should be required reading for "gurus" in ever-so-many areas. (There are many contributors to the R-help mailing list to which I subscribe who would benefit from taking this essay to heart.)
I hope that Harald Reindl reads it and takes it to heart. I have no patience with those on this list who slang off at Harald. He is a brilliant guy and provides a great service to the Fedora community. But he would be even more useful to the community if he absorbed Bill Oliver's advice.
cheers,
Rolf Turner
Rolf: Thanks for pointing out Bill's message. It's something everyone should read.
As a graduate student, I was required to teach. It took a number of years to figure it out, but I did figure out why I was a lousy teacher. Everything I did in class reflected the attitude "It's perfectly clear to me; what the f***'s wrong with you?"
On 10/12/2013 18:18, Roger wrote:
Apologies for top post but what is the url for Bills essay please? Roger
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2013-October/441664.html
https://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/users/2013-October/441664.html
Bill got it Sooo right. No set of instructions is all inclusive because they are written by experts who have forgotten or neglected the little gotchas experienced as they learned. A recent example. Installing postgresql on Fedora 19. I tried for months and having a little time to play in, finally achieved a result last night about 11:30pm after hours of experimenting.
Instructions are there, yes, but stop at a crucial point. Starting then using postgres in a terminal is a three step process, to create a database from the previous basis is a three step process, same with creating user and role and grant permissions. Each requires more hours of searching for entirely different instructions to interpret. Yes detailed instructions abound but not one explanation of what to do when an instruction is just plain wrong.
For Postgres with Rails - the instructions miss one tiny, almost insignificant gotcha. libpq-dev with out which Rails cannot run rake db:migrate. Except there is no libpq-dev for Fedora. No one bothers to mention that. Or that you have to search for and sudo yum install postgresql-devel which to a novice and for my first times defied explanation. The names have no similarity. Error messages are cryptic and unrelated.
Following instructions achieved little. However experience, this List, having an inkling from years past, remembering past experiences and knowing what to "see" in the hundreds of google pages got it working.
Another example. If someone were to write a set of instructions for setting up say, a small home network for eth0 and wireless using, for example, the telstra TH782t modem/router, a desktop and a few wireless laptops, it would take a book to go through and explain all the variations gotchas and fixes. Instructions alluded to the process, which in my case did not work for a couple of reasons.
Unless instructions are carefully crafted they are just words in the wind.
Roger
On Sat, 2013-10-12 at 09:40 -0500, Steven Stern wrote:
As a graduate student, I was required to teach. It took a number of years to figure it out, but I did figure out why I was a lousy teacher. Everything I did in class reflected the attitude "It's perfectly clear to me; what the f***'s wrong with you?"
We had a teacher like that when I was college, and after a long time we (the class) ended up having an argument with him trying to understand something that he just wasn't teaching. His response was almost what you just said. And, he finally explained it, as well.
We had a mixture of teachers at college: There were those that had come from university and into teaching, many of whom were hopeless at teaching. They may have known their stuff, and some really did, but were terrible at imparting their knowledge. A few that obviously did not know much about what they were teaching, and couldn't even answer anything you queried them about. And there were those that had come from industry, and were teaching us how to do what they used to do, and what we were going to do. They were the best teachers.
I despise this move away from apprenticeships, where you're trained to do the job that you are actually going to do; to school based training for a job that you hope you might get, against hundreds or thousands of other applicants, and where the teaching is way too theoretical, and often impractical. And I consider it to be cruel to put a hundred students through three, or more, years of schooling where there was only ever going to employment for a mere handful of them across the state.
On 13 Oct 2013 at 16:45, Tim wrote:
Subject: Re: Bill Oliver's essay on "just follow instructions". From: Tim ignored_mailbox@yahoo.com.au To: Community support for Fedora users users@lists.fedoraproject.org Date sent: Sun, 13 Oct 2013 16:45:36 +1030 Send reply to: Community support for Fedora users users@lists.fedoraproject.org
On Sat, 2013-10-12 at 09:40 -0500, Steven Stern wrote:
As a graduate student, I was required to teach. It took a number of years to figure it out, but I did figure out why I was a lousy teacher. Everything I did in class reflected the attitude "It's perfectly clear to me; what the f***'s wrong with you?"
We had a teacher like that when I was college, and after a long time we (the class) ended up having an argument with him trying to understand something that he just wasn't teaching. His response was almost what you just said. And, he finally explained it, as well.
We had a mixture of teachers at college: There were those that had come from university and into teaching, many of whom were hopeless at teaching. They may have known their stuff, and some really did, but were terrible at imparting their knowledge. A few that obviously did not know much about what they were teaching, and couldn't even answer anything you queried them about. And there were those that had come from industry, and were teaching us how to do what they used to do, and what we were going to do. They were the best teachers.
I despise this move away from apprenticeships, where you're trained to do the job that you are actually going to do; to school based training for a job that you hope you might get, against hundreds or thousands of other applicants, and where the teaching is way too theoretical, and often impractical. And I consider it to be cruel to put a hundred students through three, or more, years of schooling where there was only ever going to employment for a mere handful of them across the state.
-- [tim@localhost ~]$ uname -r 2.6.27.25-78.2.56.fc9.i686
As a teacher in community college for over 30 years, I have to agree. Forwarded you message to a number of my co-workers and Dean.. Unfortunately, the system tends to push the academic over the practical. Thanks for the message.
Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
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On Sat, 12 Oct 2013 11:10:18 +1300 Rolf Turner r.turner@auckland.ac.nz wrote: I have
no patience with those on this list who slang off at Harald.
You may need some, they are most probably exacerbated, but not as used to writing up reports as Bill.
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