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by danmux
3033 days ago
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Not trampling, just holding at arms length. Recognising the reality of the economics of most projects. Unless you live in a completely deterministic world, devoid of human fallibility, or perhaps omnipotent, or simply have unlimited time or resource, at some point you are going to have to admit you just don't know, and you are managing the percentages. Delusional overconfidence is more close to magical thinking than recognising the reality that complex systems will fail in surprising ways, and that it costs ever increasing resource to reduce the risks with ever diminishing returns, until you are forced to stop. The ruleset the computer abides by probably represents a fraction of the factors affecting success. If you feel you have never got to a point where there is an element of faith involved in your choice, then Im envious. |
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I accept that, occasionally, my systems will fail. My data will be lost. No recovery will be possible, and the damage will be permanent and lasting. I do not hope to succeed in those times, but expect to be scarred. I will fail.
Given that I will fail, I'd like to understand how I fail. I'd like to understand why I fail. I'd like to measure how often I fail, how short I fall of success, and the root causes of my failure. I'd like to know when failure is about to happen or is happening.
By writing down what I do, I know how to fail. I can write down what I do when I don't fail, too. I can write while I do, and I can read what I wrote to do it again. I can let somebody else read and do what I have done.
I can expect to fail sometimes. I can expect to not fail sometimes. I expect failures based on causes, not based on self-blame. I expect to not fail most of the time, and only fail at certain times when something has caused me to fail.
I can fail less in the future. My actions today can change how I fail in the future. I can plan to fail, or intentionally fail, or sometimes fail less. I act intentionally.
I haven't failed in a while. The last time I failed, I looked at why I failed and I did what was necessary to try to recover and fail less.
This is how SRE works. This isn't overconfidence; this is fault-tolerance. It's not easy, but it works.
To respond to your point about faith, I have plenty of faith, just not hope that my faith will be able to prevent me from failing.
And finally, try Nix sometime. It's pretty cool.