>> Personally, it scares me just to look at it. Our company just did a major upgrade to a new server and we have had two days of disaster
Sad to say, I think that is typical. "Major upgrade, new and improved systems" ... everyone might as well stay home for several days while we try to get anything working again.
However - note how Dave got this whole site up and running with hardly ANY glitches - and those so minor that few people even SAW them. And I think those were mostly related to browser idiosyncracies. It amzes me that anyone can write code that works for multiple, competing browsers!
The command-line text scrolling past actually scares me less than "modern tools" that hide all complexity behind a facade that "does it all for you".
Or they "do it all TO you" and you have no recourse when anything goes astray.
Things at the command line level tend to be relatively simple and "knowable", whereas power tools tend to have us at their mercy.
I don't WORK with PCs or their networks and applications. Thank goodness I only work with embedded microcontrollers in environments much simpler than the PC - OS - application - Internet - browser - network snake pit..
To me, that stuff is black magic dominated by vendors who want to entrap you into their toolchain and then own your soul (or, at least, your entire development budget) for eternity.
I "have to" use PC-based development tools, and have learned to fear the difficulties caused by my tools more than any difficulty in the engineering itself. Complexity is always harder!
Simplicity is prerequisite for reliability
- Edsger W.Dijkstra
Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.
-Albert Einstein
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
- H L Mencken
There are two ways of constructing a software design.
One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies.
And the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies."
- C. A. R. Hoare
