What A Ride This Has Been

I started out knowing nothing, and now I feel like I have a basic comprehension of a few of the issues that are important when creating a digital library. It happened in little dribs and drabs. I really didn’t put it all together until I read the wrap up in Assignment 11:

[B]ut at the center of all of them is some kind of operating system, some kind of web server to make them available, some kind of record management system (such as a database) that organizes and stores information about the collection, and some sort of application that scripts interactions with the database to display information according to what a user wishes to find and to store new information.

And that’s what I’ve been learning.

I think I appreciate systems (and the IT Help Desk) much more than I did, now that I have gotten my fingers “dirty” by actually trying to configure and create code. One of the biggest frustrations in working with LAMP has been the enormity and the complexity of it all. I like simple cause and effect relationships. When I do A, I should get the result B. At times during the past few weeks the system has seemed capricious, and refused to give me the results I expected, no matter how many times I proof read the code I’d typed, and made sure it matched the instructions. I lost so much time trying something over and over again, hoping for different results. (That is the definition of insanity, isn’t it?) But somewhere in my readings (I wish I could remember where) the author explained that the complexity of the system, and the possibility of one slight configuration that is different can cause unexpected results in unexpected ways later on. And somehow, that sounds rational to me.

And of course there were times when I misunderstood directions or mis-keyed a command. The sense of elation when I got the “It Works” message was in direct proportion to the sense of panic or frustration when things were not going right.