You see, the possibilities inside of a particular set might look endless, but the current backpropagation of the components which compose a particular event or resource for that matter, are finite.
What do I mean by this?
If you take a look at all of the components that seem to plague and infest Kubernetes, for example, they might look unsurmountable and outright endless to you. But lemme tell you a secret… they are not.
Kubernetes components, are various, indeed, but they are not infinite. Therefore, the combination and interactions between them must also be of a finite and particular amount. See, then, the issue, when debugging or troubleshooting, oftentimes, what wears and maybe melts us most, is the sheet expectancy that there are endless troublethooting options… And, well, that may be true if you are counting on your luck on catching the root cause of a particular unfathomable ghost hiding in plain sight that could be sabotaging your deployment.
You see, I have said previously that the number of components was finite, and not endless, but it does not mean that they cannot also stretch a loooong way around. And that might seem like endlessly or up to an eternity, and I get it… Especially when we are talking about networking components, let’s just all agree that they are all a pain in everybodys ass. Pinpointing a single point of failure in a troubleshooting session can leave us weary, but it must not be like so.
Look, I am not hoping to give you guys any single silver bullet to hit the final nail in the coffin when it comes to resolving problems that might arise due to techical difficulties (especially in prod environments), all I am saying is, that maybe, with a correct mindset (gosh, I hate that word), it is possible to at least calm one’s nerves in the midst of a crisis and try to focus with intent and beginning to paint a clear picture (of hope) that there’s a way out.
Exactly because the number of possibilites that compose a particular system are finite.
Trouble is when you have to dig even deeper into the ancient code that some otherworldly wizard has conjured in an ancient language that now ticks and tocks the applications mannerisms in a certain way to make it alive, and now it might not just merely be a problem with the routing and networking of your own infrastructure.
If that is the case, then pray. And pray hard that there is some kind of glimpse in the documentation (if there still exists any) on how to handle such edge cases.
But then, for the final point of this post, article, or whatever you wanna call it, I just wannated to shout out to all of you that, it is not necessary for one to straight up read a technical book from back-to-cover.
Those are technical books. And honestly, I don’t know why most people do treat them like novels of some kind.
Gosh, go there, skimm the pages, skip sections, go full blown in one sitting flipping through it all just to glimpse an overview of all the topics for once, darn it!
The content will still be there once you finish that quick fly by and close the book. (Of course, counting that you own a physical copy of the dammned thing and not a pdf of some kind) - Granted, I believe you get my point…
You can get some grasp and overview on what’s there, things that you might otherwise just be missing if you treat it like your standard paperback novel. Because, they are not. Little Johnny will not save scumbag Steve from a terrible fate in Chapter 9 of that goddamned Docker & Clover: Upstream Replications for Native Firewalled Applications inside section two. (totally made up name, btw, don’t even bother trying to find the cursed book).
But… see? There’s no magic happening at the end where you have to hold yourself or you’ll get a freaking spoiler at the end of the book! Maybe the only spoiler is that, I guess, if you don’t follow it as thoroughly you might end up not absorving as much information as you would like. But then again… it is a goddamned darn book, for Christ’s sake! The freaking information will not just leave up and end up running from the pages! It will still be there.
But maye we’ve become so used to dealing with books a certain way, that we do, then, indeed replicate that certain expected behavior on other kinds of books that can just be used to sanitize some gaps of knowledge we may end up having. And that is totally fine.
Repeat with me… it … is … totally … fine … to … skim … through … _ a book_.
See? Was not that hard, was it?
And, better yet… You may never know when a fleeting glance upon a page or something might end up getting carved so deep in your memory (by a pure act of random chance) that then, when you’ll be troubleshooting some kind of issue later into your life, you’ll get reminded by your subcounscious that hey, there was that small detail, remember? We might have missed…
I don’t know… I don’t know! And neither do you… But there’s always a slight chance and possibility, who knows?
In the end, just remember, knowledge of a closed system is finite and you can always skip through entire sections if you just wanted a brief overview.
That’s it.
Hope you have a good one,
And happy weeked folks!
Remember to stay hydrated.
Paece.