[OT] Debian mailinglists [was: RE: Debian or Ubuntu?]

[Mario Vukelic]

On Tue, 2008-05-20 at 14:59 -0300, Derek Broughton wrote:
> A web page with a drop down box and a text field would be more _efficient_.

You have obviously never seen a vi wizard work.

> Why?  That smacks of really poor programming in the first place.  Computer
> programming is deterministic - whenever "X" happens, then "Y" (OK, not
> entirely true, as you can add randomness, but the whole purpose of config
> files is usually to enforce determinism).  Any deterministic system can be
> completely modeled, and so there should, in theory, be _nothing_ that a
> power user would want to configure that can't be done with a config tool
> that would prevent him doing it incorrectly.

But some configs are perfectly valid in situation A, but break your box
or network in situation B. A hand-holding tool generally cannot know the
difference and has to strike a balance between being either too lenient
and fail at user protection, or being too strict and fail at getting the
job done -- which it not a choice that can ever be correct. Remember, we
are talking about server admin level stuff here; everyone is in
agreement that GUI tools are great for simple tasks that _every user
must be able to do.