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Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

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Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#21

Post by heavyset_go »

kstenerud wrote: post #7

This won't be really helpful to you since you've already built it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't like videos. I AM interested in Ansible, but I don't want to sit through videos about it; I want to read and follow the examples as I do. Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

> Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

I noticed this split with a few relatives. I can't stand having to slog through a video when I could just as easily read a transcript or a write-up. Therefore, YouTube is the last place I'll look for informative content.

My younger relatives actively seek out video tutorials and the like, and YouTube is the first place they look.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#22

Post by blunte »

kstenerud wrote: post #7

This won't be really helpful to you since you've already built it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't like videos. I AM interested in Ansible, but I don't want to sit through videos about it; I want to read and follow the examples as I do. Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

For some content (like news!), I much prefer reading. For some books, especially informational (business, self-help, etc.), I prefer audio (Audible). For tech tutorials, I've come to appreciate quite a few video courses.

A video tutorial can be great, but it's more about the preparation and pace of the delivery. There are some really great and knowledgeable teachers of tech that I cannot stand to watch/hear. And then there are a number of excellent courses on Udemy (for example) that are 99% video content.

So for me, video _can_ be great.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#23

Post by jadia »

I'm more inclined towards watching videos rather than reading books or articles. It's quick and introduces to various best practices. I started ansible with playbooks. I didn't know about the adhoc commands until now. Nice content! Keep going.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#24

Post by jadia »

yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #8
praveenster wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not op but it is mentioned in the Show HN blurb above: > Just note an email address is required to register for the course - this is a limitation of the platform I'm using to host the course. Sorry about that!

That doesn't quite seem like an answer. Can I put in a fake address? If I put in a real address, will the platform decide to spam me?

Just put in ANY valid email. They don't even ask you to confirm it before starting the course. I generally use https://www.yopmail.com emails, works fine.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#25

Post by _frkl »

voidfunc wrote: post #11

I really wish there was a configuration management tool out there with a statically typed API. I've spent countless hours debugging Ansible's YAML which gets really unwieldy with hundreds or thousands of tasks.

It's not yet 100% ready for prime-time, and certainly not for hundreds of thousands of tasks, but I wrote a ...hm... generic framework-wrapping framework (using Ansible as the first and only currently supported 'framework' -- but I'm working on a Terraform adapter, and plain shell-scripts. K8s is also planned), that supports optional typing of arguments. It also allows you to add other metadata to arguments (like documentation, references):

https://freckles.io

It can be used directly, using yaml. Or via Python (a bit like Pulumi, just more generic, and also a bit more flexible in other ways). Should be easy enough to also support other languages like JavaScript, although I think I'll write a client-library for a proper functional language first, because that'd be a really good fit, conceptually.

Still needs better (and up-to-date) documentation, and I realize I really have to work on my elevator pitch (as is probably quite obvious). But I'm already using it for most of my sysadmin/devops related tasks, and I'm growing more and more confident that the concept behind it is sound.

The ultimate goal is to allow users to build 100% composable devops pipelines, so that a complete app- (or whatever else-) infrastructure (including potential bootstrapping of physical machines as well as building container images, etc.) can be described with a single dict-like structure. That's probably a bigger piece of cake than I'll be able to bite off though :-)

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#26

Post by movedx »

kstenerud wrote: post #7

This won't be really helpful to you since you've already built it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't like videos. I AM interested in Ansible, but I don't want to sit through videos about it; I want to read and follow the examples as I do. Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

This is the first phase of the course. I go through a few phases and one of them is essentially writing small PDFs for each section and what they cover.

That might interest you more.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#27

Post by movedx »

jadia wrote: post #23

I'm more inclined towards watching videos rather than reading books or articles. It's quick and introduces to various best practices. I started ansible with playbooks. I didn't know about the adhoc commands until now. Nice content! Keep going.

Thank you :-)

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#29

Post by eropple »

cheshire_cat wrote: post #17
breatheoften wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pulumi comes the closest that I’ve seen — https://www.pulumi.com/

This seems to work only with cloud providers, not with dedi boxes / VPSs?

"Cloud?" It can work with anything with an API. If there's a Terraform provider that they or the community hasn't projected into TypeScript (or whatever) you can do that yourself with minimal effort. Not sure what else you'd want.

Re: Show HN: Ansible Crash Course

#30

Post by mdaniel »

heavyset_go wrote: post #21
kstenerud wrote: post #7

This won't be really helpful to you since you've already built it, but I'm the kind of person who doesn't like videos. I AM interested in Ansible, but I don't want to sit through videos about it; I want to read and follow the examples as I do. Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading?

> Actually, I wonder what the split is between people who prefer videos vs people who prefer reading? I noticed this split with a few relatives. I can't stand having to slog through a video when I could just as easily read a transcript or a write-up. Therefore, YouTube is the last place I'll look for informative content. My younger relatives actively seek out video tutorials and the like, and YouTube is the first pla…

> My younger relatives actively seek out video tutorials and the like, and YouTube is the first place they look.

I would suspect that's because they've had more things read to them than they have acquired the skill/patience/vocabulary/instinct to seek out things to read for themselves.

I guess similarly, without the mental movie to play out the actions they're hearing the words for, it can be easier to watch someone type or watch a program run than to read about that same action

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