While, at the same time, overriding all of the traditional ways of doing things.
If you have the slightest idea what you are doing, this bludgeoning piece of crap software will just randomly regenerate its wrong and broken configuration files over the ones that you manually configured.
Furthermore, they insist on protecting me for some reason and requiring me to do things there way ... instead of doing things the way that has worked since about 1992 - no that wasn't good enough; finding a file through locate, and editing it directly just was way too difficult. Now we need 5 levels of colorful icons amongst a collection of 140 and I have to remember "Services Panel" > "Web Services Panel" > "Web Server Configuration" > "Permissions for Web Server" or whatever the fuck they have decided to come up with.
It's called "httpd.conf" it's in the /usr/local/etc directory or the /etc directory. It's under the apache config, I use vim to edit it, just like I did in 2005, 2000, and 1995. Why must you insist on splicing the file into a spewed out mess of 85 different menu options.
Why?
Because the old way didn't use a fucking mouse. That's why. It wasn't user friendly enough, I'm guessing because it didn't look like the Windows Explorer shell - the epitome of ease of use, of course.
Now I need to find this shit that accesses that single fucking line of the file, and still type in the same damn configuration directives as if I was editing it manually in vim; but now it's through a web app; That's Progress!
I still actually have to have the knowledge of what to change to what; but now I need to know a bunch of additional information so that Cpanel won't overwrite it next time it decides to regenerate all the files from some stupid innocuous command, like an apache restart.
What files does Cpanel like to rewrite?
Who the fuck knows! Really. I don't know at all. I'm thinking that the entire /etc directory is becoming a black box where I would need to start up KDE4 on tightvnc in order to edit like, /etc/hosts in a way that won't get reverted every 5 minutes. If I knew any better, I'd know that I'd have to go into 6 configuration files and rewrite a bunch of Python and XML to disable it, along with running a bunch of distribution specific command line tools. Because you know, putting 4 layers of abstraction on a key/value pair text file is totally awesome; and people are totally capable of modifying the value of two input boxes, but are totally incapable of modifying the value of a single line of a file.
This shit is totally moronic. What is wrong with people?
I see where you are going. But what, pray tell, does Cpanel actually do?
That's easy!
All it does is that it takes a previously rather straight-forward Layout and piles shitpile after shitpile on it to create this crazy obfuscated interface where the obvious and important things are littered 4 menus deep and strewn about like some fucking 12 year old with ADHD and Photoshop decided to start making webpages last tuesday and then jizzed out some sorry excuse for a piece of software and called it Cpanel.
It takes very straightforward technical models and tosses them out the window, instead opting for some exponentially more complex "natural model" which is actually still a model, thus an abstraction, thus providing a barrier to entry, thus requiring a learning curve, and thus being counterproductive and extraordinarily detrimental to the intended purpose of further trying to simplify an already simple task.
Oh I see, what should I learn from this triage?
When webdevs get the rapt as being the stupidest, densest, dumbest programmers in the industry, I can clearly and emphatically agree when they turn to, and speak anything but with the most vile of contempt for this awful veneer that just smears and blurs otherwise obvious, straightforward processes.
For the love of God, if you want to be a programmer, learn to use a fucking computer.
For a more detailed example of this type of mentality, check out this posting on WHM
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I like this post, I like the attitude, it shows you know what you are talking about. I am indepth on Windows, and control it like you are doing - more behind the scenes than through the applets that Microsoft puts in to make things easy. I also used Linux since 1996, but I went to Windows as that was where the job was (I worked for an OEM). It is especially frustrating when you are trying to get another person to do something and they want to use the microsoft way (analogy to CPanel) and I don't want to because.. it is like a black-box voodoo [we can run the 'wizard', but instead lets...] I want to handle the real thing, directly. but that is why we create and others use.
ReplyDeleteThis article is spot on
ReplyDeleteOh my god, short of just literally wetting myself with laughter.. I have to agree with every word you say!
ReplyDeleteI agree. I lost MANY hours of time trying to figure out what CPanel was actually doing, when trying to set up a simple Apache2 server. Only use CPanel if you aren't a programmer, and prefer not to learn how to use the terminal (which is most people and that's why CPanel exists)
ReplyDelete