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Why is DNS still hard to learn?

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Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#31

Post by NikolaNovak »

monksy wrote: post #27
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…

I just wanted to add on to what you're saying: > I think partly DNS and the core protocols may seem confusing to younger people in the industry because so much stuff “just works” now. I've noticed it's become much worse since universities have been teaching Python to start with and with the whole aggressive comodization of developers. To some extent the social justice polices inacted in our communities to exclude peo…

I may agree with your point but don't understand the social justice aspect at all; makes it feel like it's something just added in. I think both our perspective as a society and thereforo educational goals have changed over decades, laterally to any social justice aspect. If nothing else, there are order of magnitude more developers of all sorts today than 25 years ago, both as absolute numbers and as relative percentage of population. Basically the enthusiastic nerds who geek out about anything and everything and want to be hands on are still there, but also a LOT of people who just want a paycheck or just have more limited / specific interests. And they do ok. And education system will provide for them.

But I just don't see e.g. for-profit bootcamps with their simplified curriculum as any kind of social justice project.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#32

Post by orangepurple »

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…

If that is the case why is the recommended way to use DNSSEC is to turn it off?

https://www.fastmail.com/blog/dnssec-dane/

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#33

Post by bratgpttamer »

paulddraper wrote: post #18
bratgpttamer wrote: post #14

I feel like DNS is one of the more straightforward protocols, especially on a practical level, and especially given that most interfaces are a dropdown and two text boxes. I have noticed a lot of developers shy away from it, probably because they don't use it much or it's not their job (rather than it being hard).

"Dropdown and two text boxes" undersells it. Here is the list of several dozen record types: https://www.iana.org/assignments/dns-parameters/dns-paramete...

Sure, but I'm talking about a day-to-day practical level. Most people will only ever need to modify A/CNAME, occasional MX and TXT, and maybe an SOA/PTR.

Even the more arcane record types (as far as I've ever used them) are essentially key-value pairs with the record type analogous to a namespace.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#34

Post by redeeman »

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

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#35

Post by icedchai »

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…

I agree. I remember learning about DNS when I was a teenager. And I've been running my own authoritative DNS servers for almost 30 years now. Remember the O'Reilly book, "DNS and BIND" ? It's still out, those this would've been first edition, around 1993.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#36

Post by xtagon »

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…

The downside to things that "just work" is that they become magical black boxes where learning how they work isn't a requirement until things really go wrong.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#37

Post by icedchai »

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

Me too. Plug-and-play consumer wi-fi routers were common place by the early 2000's.

Re: Why is DNS still hard to learn?

#39

Post by yodsanklai »

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…

> I think partly DNS and the core protocols may seem confusing to younger people in the industry because so much stuff “just works” now.

Younger people aren't dumber than old one, they build even more complex stuff on top of these old abstractions.

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