Using Your Brain #
So many times, I search the interwebs for something. Setting up a mail server on OpenBSD. How to set up a Hugo-based Blog. And, don’t get me wrong, the web is a great thing, and being able to find information just by typing a few words is amazing. But it’s getting harder and harder to get information about the underlying operations of things. That’s because so many How-Tos are showing up where it’s just a list of commands or configs, etc. No explanation necessary. Copy and paste ready.
There are two fundamental problems with this.
- It doesn’t teach you anything.
- Modern everything changes daily.
Let’s start with the second, because the first is so important.
The ever changing world #
It’s no surprise that things change a lot1. Software was a new thing back during the invention of the computer, and software development took a ton of time. “Deployment” wasn’t a word used with software2. These days, we have over the air updates, and we’re told to update early and update often, or else the boogeyman will get us.
A side effect of weekly (or more often!) updates is that software developers can’t help but change everything, Or maybe it’s the product managers. I don’t know. The point is shit changes with every update. So when I read a “How-To” that says “type this and voila!”, I know unless whatever version of whatever software I’m trying to configure exactly matches what they wrote their “How-To” for, it’s very likely not going to work.
Worse, more and more “How-To” authors don’t actually seem to know why what they’re writing about works. It’s like they don’t really know what they’re doing, stumbled across the magic, and want to tell the world about it.
Which brings us to that first point.
How Do You Learn? #
Generally, when you’re looking for a “How-To” or a tutorial, you have two choices:
- Just get it done
- Understand what’s going on
My problem with the former is that when it doesn’t work, what do you do? More and more, it seems like when that happens, you just go search for yet another “How-To” to find the right incantation3 for whatever broke. And, yeah, I’m not kidding. And don’t tell me you’ve never searched for the error string you get. I know I have. But every now and then, you get no hits. It’s broken, and no one else has encountered it, or at least they didn’t post a helpful “Here’s the config that fixed it”.
I prefer instead to understand what the underlying process going on is. It’s a value the OpenBSD folks (developers and community) espouse. Don’t just mindlessly set configs, understand what they do. They believe that each person’s situation is unique4, and only by understanding the changes they’re making can they decide the right changes to make.
So I generally prefer that people state in their instructions what they are setting, and why. Maybe they give the details, but that it less important. But explain, at least at the bare minimum, the reason for the setting
I’ll give you a little example: How do you set up SSH on a mac? I could put up screenshots, showing you exactly what menu item to select, which button to switch, etc. But what do you learn? I could instead reference “standard” items of the OS. Even though “System Preferences” has changed to “System Settings” in macOS (née MacOS, née Mac OS, née OS X …), if I said “go into settings, find sharing, and turn on remote Login”, these instructions are enough to get you to the setting in at least 5 different versions of the OS. Meanwhile, those pictures of the way to launch the “settings” application, which things to click on, all to get to the switch that turns on “Remote Login”, all become obsolete if things change (though showing such images can be helpful, I admit, especially if things have changed recently, and even if they don’t match exactly). I don’t think it’s too much to expect someone who wants to turn on SSH on a mac to know how to navigate the system settings. I mean, turning on SSH access to a machine is kinda non-trivial, and opens up a HOST of problems5. Shouldn’t you understand how to configure the system if your going to do such a thing6?
Navigating Modern Technology #
Have you ever tried to help someone over the telephone with their computer or phone? I have7. And have you ever said something like “Click OK”, only to have the person just rail on about there being no “OK” thing to click/tap/select, only to mention 10 minutes later “Do you mean ‘Continue’?”. I have a term I use for this: It’s Rage Inducing. Seriously, you cannot expect me to remember the precise word used in an operating system that changes every few months. And, seriously, can you not figure out that I’m trying to say “tap on the thing that would indicate some form on acknowledgment that you have completed whatever action you were taking”? This has gotten to the point where I now literally say “click on the thing that acknowledges that you have completed the action”. Which results in “Do you mean ‘Continue’?” Sigh. Yes. I mean “Continue”.
I used to laugh because when helping people (with tech stuff), I would often ask people to read me the error message they were seeing. Conversations would usually go something like like this:
Them: My computer is completely broke, and nothing is working. Help!
Me: What does the error message say?
Them: “The file can’t be found.” What does that mean?
Me: It means that the file can’t be found.
Them: Oh! So where is it?
Me: Not where you’re looking for it.
Literally, I cannot tell you the how many times someone would read me an error message, ask me what it means, I would literally repeat the error message, and then they’d get it.
So what do I mean about how to navigate modern technology (or, you know, really anything)? Don’t just read things. Don’t assume. Think about it for a minute or two, if you need to. If your knee-jerk reaction to an error message is “that can’t be!” or “what does that mean?”, well, think about the fact that the person who wrote that error message wasn’t trying to deceive you. I swear to god what makes the technorati the technorati is just taking a guess at what something means.
It’s not unlike reading a book and encountering a word for the first time. What does it mean? Do you need to look it up? Or can you glean the meaning from context? People say that kids pick this stuff up so quickly, but, no, they don’t really do any better than adults. At least, some adults. But what kids are good at is picking up meaning from context. They’re used to learning, so they try and figure out things.
So. Use your brain. We all get used to acknowledging error messages, to the point we don’t notice when they change. When things don’t work the way you expect, pay attention to the errors! When trying new things, maybe take the time to understand what you’re doing. Even if you simply follow the steps the first time, maybe go back and do it again, tweaking things slightly to make sure you understand what goes where, and why. Maybe you think you don’t have time. None of us do, but here’s the thing: When things go sideways later, you’ll take the time, because you have no choice. And it won’t on your schedule anymore.
So use your brain. Try. Make an actual effort. You’ll thank me later.
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Perhaps I should write a post about the ever-accelerating rate of change in the world. Of course, other’s have done that, too, and perhaps better than I could. Though that particular article starts to focus on the future and how AI will affect it. But my point is. . . it took 2.4M years to learn to use fire. It took 66 years to go from the first powered flight to the moon. People are never wrong when they complain about not being able to keep up, at least not in the “recent” past. ↩︎
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Shelfware was. It wasn’t nice, but sadly, it was accurate. ↩︎
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I don’t use the words “magic” and “incantation” lightly. As Clark’s 3rd law states, if you don’t understand it, it might as well be magic (I paraphrase, of course). Thus, when people don’t understand how things work, you end up with “ritual fixes”. That’s what I call it when someone does a series of steps to fix something, based off of what other people have said works for them. Rarely does anyone try anything but the last step, or the whole sequence, so they never realize it’s step 3 and 12 that are the actual fixes, and the other 15 steps are superfluous. ↩︎
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It’s not. I mean, OK, it kinda is, but there are clearly a huge list of common things people want to accomplish. But I gloss over this a bit because, really, it could be unique, and anyway, dammit, you should know how things work. ↩︎
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See what I did there? “HOST”. :-) If you don’t get it, why are you reading this? ↩︎
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That’s not a small point. Going back to OpenBSD, a lot of people say things like “I’m trying to set the frobnitz setting to blorfig. Why is it not working?”, and getting back a response of “Can you tell us why you need to change the frobnitz setting?”, because VERY often, people have no clue what the forbnitz setting is, they just read something once somewhere that say “I set the frobnitz setting to blorfig” and assume that is a requirement for whatever they are trying to do. Maybe, maybe not. . . ↩︎
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That “How do you set up SSH on a mac” wasn’t just for shits and giggles. It’s necessary to have a (decently secure) hands-off remote access process to someone’s mac. Guess why I need that. Guess why a friend asked me how to do it. Yeah, because saying “Click OK” can be avoided, and we can click the damn button ourselves. ↩︎