Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is DNS still hard to learn?

jvns.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

201–210 of 261 posts

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#201

Post by zx8080 »

syntheweave wrote: post #188
13of40 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my 2 cents: I worked on the DNS in Windows Server back in the 200x's (validating the UI and back-end functionality, not dev work), so I did have to learn about it at one point and I recall that there was a vicious level of complexity to it compared to what we ask it to do. The 99% scenario is turning a domain into an IP via an A record. Next after that is doing the same with an MX record. Beyond that is this dee…

This is the comment I wanted to make. DNS is one of those technologies that has a simple explanation - "it's indirection" - with consequential ramifications that turn it into someone's job. Most people will not interact with it often enough to know how to perform the job, so they remain hesitant and try not to do anything at all with it, because it burned them once before. Git is analogous - most uses of Git are form…

> Git is analogous - most uses of Git are formulaic, and the underlying concepts are simple enough - but actually accessing the right lever to pull when disaster strikes is unclear and hard to experiment with.

Would you mind sharing some examples of hard-to-recover git related disaster? I ask because I previously worked with applying hundreds of patches on top of chromium (yes, Opera). This resulted in __multiple__ merge‐conflicts. However not anything close to what I would call a git related disaster. Anything could be undone nicely.

What is important is that git is very verbose by default. It guides through not only a repo current state but also options user has.

I've met many developers not caring to read any of a git output and then claiming git is too complex and git broke their repo and it's "too complex to use". I'm sure it's not the case for you though.

So I'm just curious what kind of disaster was mentioned above.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#202

Post by quesera »

rsync wrote: post #178

The question I have is: Why isn't there a combined MTA/DKIM/DNS server ? Why am I installing and configuring and running and monitoring all of these different server software packages ? I'd like to have a single config file that handles everything required to run a mailserver. If I have more complex needs I can split things up make them modular ... but I don't.

> Why isn't there a combined MTA/DKIM/DNS server ?

If the nameserver was part of the MTA, where would you configure a CNAME for your webserver?

> I'd like to have a single config file that handles everything required to run a mailserver.

I think the kids call that Ansible. :)

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#203

Post by chefandy »

TheNewsIsHere wrote: post #107
chefandy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd conservatively estimate 90% of the people who make core FOSS software interface decisions haven't had to learn anything technical in an entirely unfamiliar domain where there existing mental models didn't apply in decades. Beyond that, many consider having learned these arbitrary, terse interfaces as a badge of honor, and for some reason thinks that makes them better technologists. I'll bet they'd be even better…

I think of this in the same way I think of documentation. I try to write documentation that is as clear as it is concise and well structured. But sometimes that’s just not realistically possible, and expressing information often _has_ to assume some level of familiarity with the underlying concepts. I’ve never considered DNS to be a complicated technology, and I’ve never considered that tools like dig and the abbrevi…

> but after more than a decade using it, I feel like changing it now is just an appeal to futility

And that's why your learning to use these tools a decade ago was as painful as it was for me 20+ years ago, and so on. Nobody improves it because the only people with the clout to make the changes is too set in their ways to change it, and have come to believe the ridiculous notion that it's beneficial for people to learn it, despite not being related to the actual problem.

I worked in technical roles for the better part of 25 years, including 10 as a back end developer. One of the reasons I got into design was to try and break chains like this, but talking to the FOSS community about design gets nearly zero traction and a whole lot of pushback from folks who think they know a lot more about design than they do. Nothing you do matches the information density of a train schedule in a large city, and those designs are so ubiquitous and intuitive that we take them for granted. That was not always the case— someone decided to lay things out like that at some point because they knew it works be easier and more intuitive for the majority even if it might take some adjustment for existing everyday users. And designers still work to make them better, to this day.

I wrote a tutorial teaching non-technical folks to use a rest API. It required no knowledge beyond familiarity with using web browsers, and ended with people making useful queries with curl. It was short, visual, and effective- I learned that multiple non-profits at the time used it in their materials to teach folks technical literacy. Just because using a bunch of terse jargon is easier for developers to write and acceptable for other developers to read doesn't mean it's optimal... Or even good. Especially when the realm world be much more accessible to non-technical people if it was designed better.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#204

Post by StillBored »

As a nslookup user since before dig, i find the default dig output to be less than ideal. The top->bottom flow, the "important" information is always the third option on a line, etc.

Basically how do I put this, uh, its obviously written by someone for themselves and people who use it everyday.

So, for most things I continue to use nslookup, it gives me what I want 99% of the time, and for me its easier to parse.

So, various other people have said something similar but it reminds me of a couple utilities in AIX that an office mate of mine wrote. The thing was a very sharp tool but the 3 cases that comprise pretty much 100% of its usage required three+ mode selection parameters, etc just to print the equivilant of "its working" or "its not working". The result was 50 characters of typing that quickly turned into a shell script with two parameters. I sorta have the same thing to say about the "ip" command which showed up at the same approx time as dig. Yup it can do everything, but its a terrible UI too for all the same reasons. The defaults are ugly/hard and the hard stuff still takes 10 mins reading the man page for the once every two years you need to do it.

So worst of both worlds.

PS: I sorta feel the same way about bind, its written for people who run big public DNS servers, the rest of us are better served with "unbound" or the half dozen other utilities that are more oriented towards users looking to run an in-house split dns/caching resolver setup.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#205

Post by cyberax »

syntheweave wrote: post #188
13of40 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just my 2 cents: I worked on the DNS in Windows Server back in the 200x's (validating the UI and back-end functionality, not dev work), so I did have to learn about it at one point and I recall that there was a vicious level of complexity to it compared to what we ask it to do. The 99% scenario is turning a domain into an IP via an A record. Next after that is doing the same with an MX record. Beyond that is this dee…

This is the comment I wanted to make. DNS is one of those technologies that has a simple explanation - "it's indirection" - with consequential ramifications that turn it into someone's job. Most people will not interact with it often enough to know how to perform the job, so they remain hesitant and try not to do anything at all with it, because it burned them once before. Git is analogous - most uses of Git are form…

ANYTHING that has the word "blockchain" is automatically disqualified from pretty much any real use.

In particular, pretty much nobody wants to trust DNS names that can cost hundreds of millions to blockchain. Because if you lose (or compromise) your private key, then that's it. The domain is gone.

With regular DNS this would be solved by a couple of irate phone calls to registrars. At worst, via a court case.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#206

Post by chefandy »

dahfizz wrote: post #133
chefandy wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd conservatively estimate 90% of the people who make core FOSS software interface decisions haven't had to learn anything technical in an entirely unfamiliar domain where there existing mental models didn't apply in decades. Beyond that, many consider having learned these arbitrary, terse interfaces as a badge of honor, and for some reason thinks that makes them better technologists. I'll bet they'd be even better…

I disagree. The CLI is inherently a super-user oriented interface. The CLI needs to let an experienced user be as productive as possible. If you need a pretty UI with everything spelled out, you should go on GitHub and find a GUI that someone built on top of the core tool. But dumbing down the core tool is not the way to go. The --help message should be good, and the man page needs to be good, but the tool itself sho…

A) dumbed-down interfaces are bad design; Most you see were made by developees trying to be designy. No shade— it's a different profession with relevant degrees and career paths, and most designers would make terrible code if they tried. B) Good interface design absolutely does not require a gui. I've been professionally using (and loving) these tips for decades, but many cross the border from negligent to user hostile. C) Download SideFX HOUDINI, which has a nice pretty interface and is fully scriptable with python and it's own language, vex, and tell me that's "dumbed down."

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#208

Post by unmole »

zx8080 wrote: post #201
syntheweave wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the comment I wanted to make. DNS is one of those technologies that has a simple explanation - "it's indirection" - with consequential ramifications that turn it into someone's job. Most people will not interact with it often enough to know how to perform the job, so they remain hesitant and try not to do anything at all with it, because it burned them once before. Git is analogous - most uses of Git are form…

> Git is analogous - most uses of Git are formulaic, and the underlying concepts are simple enough - but actually accessing the right lever to pull when disaster strikes is unclear and hard to experiment with. Would you mind sharing some examples of hard-to-recover git related disaster? I ask because I previously worked with applying hundreds of patches on top of chromium (yes, Opera). This resulted in __multiple__ m…

> I've met many developers not caring to read any of a git output and then claiming git is too complex and git broke their repo and it's "too complex to use".

This a hundred times over.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#210

Post by deathanatos »

redeeman wrote: post #34
shon wrote: post #2

It’s not. It’s one of the few things that hasn’t changed much and it’s operation is fairly straightforward. dig is a little confusing. It’s more capable but less straightforward than good old nslookup (which still works fine BTW). I think partly DNS and the core protocols may seem confusing to younger people in the industry because so much stuff “just works” now. For example, today wifi routers “just work” right out…

> In the early 2000s it would have taken a network engineer with knowledge of DNS, IP, Ethernet, RFC1918, actual routing protocols and whole bunch of other stuff to set something like that up You remember things differently than I

Yeah. It was a bit different from today, but not by much. Really if anything, stuff has regressed since then.

Our setup in the early 2000s was the same as today, except the AP, router, and modem were separate devices. This was somewhat beneficial: today, my monopoly ISP forces me to use their all-in-one junk box. There's not even a possibility of competition, and lo and behold, I don't think the forced-box does anything more than the three pieces of equipment did. (Except, finally and only as of the last year, IPv6. But perhaps if there had been real competition, that'd happened a decade sooner, esp. since I first saw it in '07 on a non-ISP connection…)

Combining the AP/router I can get behind. It's when it became ISP domain that it went south.

The 90s were rougher, as the networking stack in Windows was a bit more terrible. I have vague nightmares about installing drivers for TCP … where the TCP driver was somehow specific to the network card. That sentence doesn't even make sense by today's standards. Stuff got better in the 2000s.

Post reply on HN