[chef-dev] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Dialect support and loading enhancements

[Noah Kantrowitz < >]

On Sep 19, 2013, at 5:16 PM, Adam Jacob 
<
 >
 wrote:

> I don't know; what little I understand about language learning says it only 
> holds for dialects you know. If you struggle to learn English, I don't 
> propose you switch to French as a simpler glide path.
> 
> If you know of French, you may well find places where expressing yourself 
> that way makes everything easier. What I'm most not sold on here is that we 
> are better off doing dialects than really tuning the dsl,  and dropping 
> other cognitive barriers.

We could definitely improve the various DSLs, though even with that a side 
benefit of this structure is that it can be extended to roles/data bags and 
hooked in to knife upload, as that currently can't handle non-JSON formats. 
Even if we remove recipes from the dialect system I think that part is worth 
keeping.

> 
> I know it's not zero sum - we can do both.  But as soon as the recipe 
> dialects ship in chef, it's going to need to feel first class: if it 
> doesn't,  it will never gain traction.

I've specifically punted on having anything but Ruby for a recipe dialect so 
the community can sort out if its a good idea and what kinds of things it 
should be used for. I will definitely migrate my Javascript and Python 
proto-dialects from chef-funnel.

> 
> If you come in alone,  starting with YAML for recipe syntax is a mistake - 
> you need your baby language skills to grow with you, and the complexity of 
> the holy trinity is not high in chef.  How much of your simplification do 
> you really think comes from dialects, and how much from cookbook structure 
> simplification?

I think you underestimate the perceived barrier of entry for the Python 
community and other similar places. These are not "baby language skills", 
these are very good programmers that just need to be led along a path and 
Python syntax helps them absorb the ideas behind resources and idempotency 
and all the good Chef-y core concepts. I don't think people are avoiding Chef 
because they can't learn Ruby, its really not that hard, but it adds 
considerably to the _feeling_ of difficulty.

--Noah

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