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Learn a scripting language and play nicely: How to get a DevOps job

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

"Most sysadmins can write a shell or python script to do some job control but I wouldn't trust many of them to implement a B+ tree library in C."

And I think that highlights a good point, already touched-on but worth noting: every good Sysadmin I know is able to script pretty well, often in multiple languages both old and new.

But none (and I'll include myself among them) would call themselves a "programmer". None would be able (or even want) to code up a new application in C, at least not without a lot of effort and learning.

To my mind, Sysadmins script stuff to remove repetition, solve a problem, maybe even provide a tool or utility that will make a task easier for themselves and other systems types. Programmers do that kind of thing too, but tend to write applications for consumption by end-users, if not sales & marketing and ultimately, paying customers.

It's not an absolute line of course; I've also known Sysadmins who coded up nice web apps for the whole department to use, and DB programs that finance relied on. As OP said, those tend to be more rare, from the skillset standpoint as well as what they'd rather be working on anyway.

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