Doug Hughes wrote: > Richard Chycoski wrote: >> Neil Neely wrote: >> >>> I've been using puppet for 8 months and have yet to learn Ruby[1]. >>> >> Yes, but this applies to people who have been using Perl [of >> fill-in-the-blank-package-or-language] for *years* without learning >> to use it! :-) >> >> It's a question of how much can you do without learning the >> underlying language of the package? What can you *NOT* do without it? >> >> > Caveat: I don't know Ruby or Puppet currently, but I'm not sure the > counter-argument holds (others may judge better). > > For example, there is no need to know anything about Ocaml (thank God) > to use unison, nor is there any need to know C to use KDE or Gnome, > etc. Puppet may be in a different space where leveraging the > underlying language gains you tangible benefit, but maybe to be a > productive netizen there's no need. > > $.02 I do agree that for most packages, you have no need to learn the underlying language, as the application is fully self-contained.
However, therein still lies my my question - I haven't used Puppet, so although I hear people saying that you can generally get along without learning Ruby, what classes of problems do you need to learn Ruby to solve in Puppet? For myself, picking up yet-another-programming-language is not an issue, after the first dozen or so the remaining dozens are easy - but not everyone is prepared for this. If there are classes of problems that require learning Ruby for effective use of Puppet, it would be good for those who are looking towards Puppet to know them before getting boxed in. If it really *is* just extreme corner-cases that need it, then some examples of when people have had to resort to extending Puppet using Ruby would be interesting to know. Although, getting walked down the garden path can be a great motivator to learn a new language when you need that 'teensy little extension' to complete a job at 3 am.... :-) - Richard _______________________________________________ Tech mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tech This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
