[PLUG] please help with UNIX / Linux program at Clark College

[Chris Jantzen]

On Wed, Jan 28, 2004 at 10:14:29AM -0800, Rich Shepard wrote:
>   The SysAdmins I know and admire don't do either systems or applications
> programming. Drop the C, java and system calls (that would be covered in the
> language courses in any case). As Paul pointed out so well a couple of weeks
> ago, the SysAdmins are the maintenance engineers in the computer hierarchy.
> Programmers have a different role.

IME, a good sysadmin has a working knowledge of C -- this is
particularly important in the "Open Source Age". When there isn't
documentation, or when you're trying to figure out why the system
software is behaving in a peculiar way, it helps tremendously to
actually be able to "RTFS" as they say. One need not be able to build
software from the grond up, but being able to read and interpret code
as well as hack it a bit is invaluable as a sysadmin.

Plus, if you have to learn C and Perl and understand the subtle
differences between them, you have all the tools to be able to hack
just about any source out there. Kind of like learning Latin and, say,
Spanish and then being able to grok just about any other Romantic
language.

Plus plus, C is stricter than Perl, in general, so it will provide a
good mindset for writing more robust Perl scripts.

-- 
chris kb7rnl =->
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