Online presentation, System Transparency, 3/6/2024

[Steve Litt]

Hi all,

GoLUG meeting discussing the costs and benefits of transparent systems
on 3/6:

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What: Online presentation: System Transparency, Costs and Benefits
Who: Steve Litt
When: Wednesday 3/6/2024 at 7PM Eastern Standard Time
Where: Jitsi online presentation, https://meet.jit.si/golug [1]
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FEATURING:
* Quick demo of my new email pager system
* Definition of System Transparency:
    - Many accessible test points
    - Internal workings are partially to completely visible
    - Opposite of black box
* Two examples from my new email pager system:
    - Fetchmail enhanced with a shellscript
    - Procmail enhanced with a Python program
* Costs and Benefits:
    - Benefits
    - Costs
    - Making the choice
* Contrived test points

System transparency yields huge debugging benefits, but
paradoxically can also add to complexity. Whether you're creating a
new system or using a pre-made system for new or unusual purposes,
you need to make your system or subsystem at least transparent
enough that you can sanely debug it, in order to save yourself hours or
days of frustrating and needless debugging. This is true of hardware
and software, although this presentation will showcase software. I hope
to see you there.

SteveT


====
[1]

Online via Jitsi:
https://meet.jit.si/golug

Mobile app:
https://jitsi.org/downloads/

Desktop app:
https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet-electron/releases

-- 

Steve Litt
GoLUG Publicity Coordinator

Originally founded in Orlando, Florida, United States, GoLUG now
welcomes an international audience for online presentations and
discussions on Linux and adjacent technologies.

http://golug.org