systemd vice SysV/LSB init systems - what next ?

[seth vidal]

On Tue, 2011-07-19 at 08:45 -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
> Just because shell scripts are familiar doesn't make then easier.
> Shell scripts can be quite quite fragile.  Collectively as admins
> we've grown very attuned to dealing with shell semantics good and bad.
>  None of us who are deeply familiar with shell can You easily assess
> the relative merits of systemd because we aren't familiar with systemd
> yet.
> 
> 
> I've heard the same arguments from other people in other contexts for
> years, especially in scientific computing. Why on earth should anyone
> ever need to learn anything except IDL scripting for scentific data
> analysis. It was good enough 20 years ago..its good enough now. We
> have all this complex fragile IDL scripting codebase built up. Why on
> earth would be through it a way for html5 based data plotting?
> 
> I'm utterly unmoved by any arguments which boil down to "I'm familiar
> with this 20+ year old tech, and I don't want to learn something new"
> 
> 
> Familiar is not automatically easier or better, harder or worse. It is
> simply familiar and the longer we hold on to the familiar the harder
> it will every be for us to take the time to invest in better
> technologies so we can realize the full potential of those
> technologies

I agree with one section of your argument:
 arguments which are just "I'm not used to this" are bad arguments. 

Many of the arguments presented in this and other threads do not boil
down to that. If you believe them to do so, Jeff, then you're presenting
a straw man as I'm sure you're aware.

Many of the arguments are this: All change has a cost.

That cost is offset by the benefit of the new feature functionality. If
you introduce change with relatively low introduction cost then you
don't need much benefit to justify it. If you introduce change with a
relatively high introduction cost then the benefits better be
significant to justify it.

This isn't about familiarity, it is simple economics.

-sv