[TriLUG] The thin line...

[Jon Carnes]

On Thu, 2006-09-28 at 16:48, Rick DeNatale wrote:
> I know that we've got members who consider themselves sysadmins, and
> others who consider themselves programmers.
> 
> I'm curious about how much overlap in tools there is between these two
> self-perceptions.
> 
> So for the sysadmins among us how many of you are using any of the
> following to do sysadmin tasks.  I'm talking here about managing your
> scripts and configuration files, not using these tools to get or
> install software from source:
> 
Cleaning up my old mail... 

I wear both hats at FeatureTel, though I'm trying to pass on the
Sysadmin hat to my good friend Jaimie. He has the skills, but his head
just isn't big enough yet :-)


> 1) make (or less likely perhaps, ant or rake)
I use make a lot, but then most of the apps I run have to be pretty
close to the cutting edge - and I have to customize a lot. 

> 2) A configuration management/repository system like cvs or subversion.
We'll probably get around to this once we hire on some *real*
developers, but for now I just hack and burn and script both the hacking
and the burning...

> 
> And on a scale of 0 (don't use it at all) through 1 (pure programming
> language) to 10 (pure scripting language) where do you put your use of
> these languages?
> 
>     bash or your favorite shell
Bash is the stuff man! 
When I'm wearing the Sysadmin hat I give this an 8. 
When I'm wearing my programming hat, I give it a 2.
Scripting is often a fast easy way to massage data into reports, but
it's slower and not as easily formated as a real programming tools (like
Python). But Bash is THE tool when you have to hack through a million
lines of log output to find the one or two valid g-nuggets of info you
need.

>     perl
Perl was an early crush of mine, I thought I would love it forever...
but then I discovered Python. :-)
0.1

>     python
Python is the true love of my life. When I'm wearing my programming hat
(and not hacking out new Asterisk modules), I'm programming in Python. I
give it an 8.
As for Sysadmin... It comes in handy to customize some apps and even to
write some of our own system monitoring tools. but it gets a 1 here. 

>     ruby
No ruby slippers for me...  I haven't found a need for it yet, but then
I'm not writing integrated apps for mass production. 0

>     php
On the sysadmin side, I hack it when I have to - but mostly I just use
Python even for HTTP apps.  I give it 0.2

>     c(++)
It's so lovely to hack Kernel code (in Cent OS 4.3), and for customizing
Asterisk. I give this a 2 (on my Programming side)
0 for my sysadmin side.

>     COBOL <G>
Just for grins I assume. Unlike Aaron, I *am* a geezer. I remember when
Cobol was big (twice)... and Fortran too. I'm sure there is still some
money to be made by folks who want to go that route... but I bet you
won't find *any* of those folks on this list! :-)

Take care!

Jon Carnes