Re: Advancing from Unix Sysadmin to Programmer

From: Juha Laiho (Juha.Laiho_at_iki.fi)
Date: 05/21/04 

Date: Fri, 21 May 2004 18:47:02 GMT

nospammac@yahoo.com (Martin McMahon) said:
>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.
>
>I am nearly finished (one year left) a B.Sc. in Information Technology
>and have approx. 8 years of solid Unix System Admin experience behind
>me. I am also proficient in Shell Programming, Perl and reasonably
>proficient in C. I do not have experience in OO programming, but am
>practising at home on personal projects.

Depending on what all you've done during your career, you might have
more than you initially see.

You most probably pretty well know the Unix system functionality, f.ex.
possibilities and limitations of the file system (f.ex. ownership and
privilege issues). You also might know rather well the system call
interface, and realise that in the end system calls are the limit;
they either allow or prohibit some action.

Also, you may have been testing various TCP protocols using telnet, and
more or less understand the functionality of SMTP and HTTP protocols
(and again, possibilities and limitations of them). You may know what
can and cannot be expected as proxy server functionality.

You may also have some database experience -- depending on what exactly,
this also could be a benefit.

... and so on. These may offer you a vastly wider knowledge base on
which to build your programming career than that of someone who has just
completed some base programming training. Lately, I've seen too many
programmers who don't have a clue about how to work with databases,
what are the limitations (and on the other hand services) of the OS
platform, and what are the possibilities and limitations of various
common protocols (and which protocols make sense in which uses).

This is not to say that there are programmers who also have wide knowledge
of the field, but I thought to list some possible assets you may have
overlooked. 

-- 
Wolf  a.k.a.  Juha Laiho     Espoo, Finland
(GC 3.0) GIT d- s+: a C++ ULSH++++$ P++@ L+++ E- W+$@ N++ !K w !O !M V
         PS(+) PE Y+ PGP(+) t- 5 !X R !tv b+ !DI D G e+ h---- r+++ y++++
"...cancel my subscription to the resurrection!" (Jim Morrison)

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