I'm primarily a
Submitted by Steve on Tue 1 Jul 2008
| User |
   18% | 196 votes |
| Developer |
12% | 138 votes |
| Sysadmin |
30% | 331 votes |
| A mixture |
35% | 384 votes |
| Something else entirely .. |
3% | 34 votes |
| Total 1084 votes |
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With the benefits of hindsight I've always kinda wished I'd picked a different name for the site, something that made it more beginner friendly. Both Debian-beginner, and admin-beginner.
Whilst it is ostensibly a technical site the most popular articles appear to be the more beginner-friendly ones. Which suprised once I noticed. I guess that google, and other search engines, send people here as a result of people wanting introductions and explainations of pretty "basic" things.
My own opinion is that to be a good system administrator you need to be a competent developer too - or at least you need to be able to read/write shell scripts, perl scripts, and rarely pieces of C.
Maybe I'm a little biased though, after all I am an ex-developer..
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Writing and testing code is difficult, and most system admin tasks revolve around making systems reliable for which you want well tested code. If you are a good developer the pay-off might shift slightly, but you'd probably be in the wrong job, programming pays better.
When I still see SERIOUS Perl gurus messing up in differentiating between undef, NULL, and 0, and "0", I'm reminded why I try to avoid writing code to get the job done (and why I like strongly typed programming languages).
Stringing existing tools together with pipes is often a simpler and more reliable way, and the error handling tends to be easy with tools that behave like pipes.
That said, I probably should write more Perl utilities, so that when I need to fix the existing ones because it wasn't well enough written or tested, I don't have to relearn chunks of Perl.
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I started creating web pages then CGI applications first. My hosted webserver at the time was Red Hat, so I suppose I started Linux life as a developer (of sorts). I then became a general Linux user, of both Debian and Red Hat systems. As I'm also the only user on some of those systems be default I became the sysadmin. Over time I've started to support other people's computers so I'm more than just an accidental sysadmin.
So I voted "A mixture".
On a secondary note is it worth becoming a Debian Developer? I've got a number of small Perl modules (on CPAN) that I'd be happy to contribute and support in Debian. I'd like to help with Debian but at the same time their own rules for becoming a Debian Developer are a bit onerous.
--
"It's Not Magic, It's Work" Adam
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But my CS background brought me to development.
Still I always want to develop my admin skills.
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The reason I like using Etch is though I may joke about riding herd on a bunch of boxes, it's actually a very simple job on my network - leaving me time to do usery stuff like websurfing :)
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Belonging to and following sites like this help me to do these things at least without complete ignorance.
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I am an admin.
I am not a developer.
As for something else entirely....ya, I've been told that before.
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Since I am solidly non-coding, at work I am a sysadmin with production machines but a user when I am home or playing with my desktop box. Therefore for this poll I am a mixture.
The advanced bash scripting guide is my very best friend. I do know some Perl, but I find it easy to forget and I am constantly referring back to books or more likely Google. I *do* have all of the C and C++ books, I have just never had time to really LEARN C. The jargon guide talks about a larval stage -- maybe I missed that since I was 30 before picking up computers as a hobby, and 33 before starting IT as a career. You can't pupate with kids to feed.
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