Re: Advancing from Unix Sysadmin to Programmer

From: David Schwartz (davids_at_webmaster.com)
Date: 05/20/04 

Date: Thu, 20 May 2004 05:38:52 -0700

Martin McMahon wrote:

> I am a 33 year old Unix System Admin and am currently at a stage
> in my career where I have identified a change is needed in my career.
[snip]
> Is it possible at this stage of my life to transfer (by whatever
> means) to a purely programming role, considering my age,
> experience and education?

    Yes, of course. You're young and fairly experienced, so it should not be
all that difficult.

    Unfortunately, though, there's no substitute for experience. You'll have
to make every programming mistake two or three times just like every other
programmer. And other programmers will be familiar with algorithms you've
never even heard of. And you can't read about these things and absorb them,
you have to run into problems and solve them.

    You'll be behind the programming experience curve, but maybe you can
make up for that with your system administration skills and experience. One
of my top programmers was afraid to go into one of our DNS servers and make
a simple change (CNAME a failed server over to one that was still
working) -- he was afraid he'd break something.

    DS

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