[darcs-users] ssh path

Alexander Staubo alex at purefiction.net
Fri Nov 23 14:52:14 UTC 2007


On 11/23/07, Yitzchak Gale <gale at sefer.org> wrote:
> > And SSH is widely
> > available, on all platforms you can think of.
>
> But only after you set it up. I have found that to be
> the major obstacle to using darcs with my
> teams. Nowadays, most people have never
> even heard of SSH, even experienced software
> developers. So I spend hours on phone calls
> and emails trying to explain the concepts to
> them and help them troubleshoot.

I find this conversation fascinating, because of the apparent
techno-cultural gap between the participants.

In the Unix world -- meaning pretty much everywhere outside Microsoft
shops -- SSH is all-pervasive, and has been for the last ten years or
so, whereas WebDAV is a standard widely seen to have failed miserably
(in part due to its complexity), now a niche technology largely
relevant to calendaring, being supplanted by the Atom [1] for other
applications such as publishing. For Subversion, svn+ssh seems more
common than WebDAV these days.

This is apparently not the case in the Microsoft world. Initially I
was surprised that a Microsoft developer would be oblivious of such
basic knowledge, and talk about such technology as being "deprecated"
and dwindling in popularity, which is clearly nonsense. But then I
realized that I have a fairly fuzzy idea of what the Microsofters are
using these days; so if Microsoft's world is insular, then so is mine.

I was reminded that recently I had to help a newly hired colleague set
up his box to work with Darcs, SSH and Ruby, a painful process
involving Putty, Pageant and much cursing [2]. This is where you get
to really taste the philosophical impedance mismatch between Windows
and Unix. I truly pity the web developer who has to work on Windows;
not because Windows is so bad, but because in the web ecosystem, which
is fundamentally Unixy, Windows is like the idiot imbred cousin from
the country, replete with bucky teeth. (There is a good reason why a
lot of shops whip themselves bloody every day with Visual SourceSafe,
or resort to half-way solutions like TortoiseSVN: it integrates
perfectly with Windows.)

My point is that even as developers we have cultural biases, and we
need to be aware of them. Darcs could be friendlier to use on Windows,
sure, but you cannot talk about these things without also considering
all the other users who happen to be using technology which you
somewhat thought was obsolete. Similarly, I think I will revise my
perspective of WebDAV: a flawed technology that is, somehow, wildly
popular on some planet I don't care about visiting, but popular
nonetheless.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(standard)

[2]  A process which was eventually resolved when said colleague tried
OS X for a couple of days, and suddenly realized his conversion was
complete when his Windows keyboard suddenly felt awkward and
unfamiliar.

Alexander.


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