21–30 of 424 posts
Should sysadmins have software development experience (e.g. DevOps)? For what values should 'X have Y experience?' Should we go as far as... "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new proble…
Should sysadmins have software development experience (e.g. DevOps)? For what values should 'X have Y experience?' Should we go as far as... "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new proble…
How you get there is up to you. My own path was freakishly meandering. Don't be afraid to get out of your depth, but try to have a mentor around to stop you drowning.
And remember that DevOps is a mindset, not a job. If someone tries to setup a "devops team", run away.
Should sysadmins have software development experience (e.g. DevOps)? For what values should 'X have Y experience?' Should we go as far as... "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new proble…
I think this is kind of a given, today. I don't know many healthy, growing organizations for whom their "sysadmins" are not either originally developers or proficient in writing at least domain-specific code (I have always said that I am a software developer whose output is systems rather than web apps, because it's true; right now, with my current projects, I just wear both hats and get on with it!). Even the term "sysadmin" has largely disappeared in my neck of the woods; it has been largely replaced with "SRE" or similar, but that sort of position invariably seems to have development connotations.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is a function of design requirements, not lack of foresight. If your manager tells you the cab needs to be 20% roomier without changing the outside dimensions, or they change the engine going into the thing without changing the structural integrity of the car, there goes your maintenance space.
I feel that managers of mechanical engineers who design cars should have some experience servicing vehicles.
Should sysadmins have software development experience (e.g. DevOps)? For what values should 'X have Y experience?' Should we go as far as... "A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new proble…
I've work with many of them, very good about Adobe products and Apple last thing, but clueless about, why their final code is of poor quality.
Fortunately, many of them did get their Ego down, when the web did start to move from markup (html+css) to code (js). Until then, they did take any feedback from a sysadmin, as an attack to their work.
About developers and architects... they should simply be the final support (24/7 calls included) for their work and changes.
As a side note... a sysadmin IS A developer (a systems developer). An application developer, usually should be a systems developer if he/she is working in a project that includes a platform to run (unless he/she is just uploading an app to any appstore). An operator with limited privileges, is just that. The concept of "pure developer" or "pure sysadmin" is so 199x...
No. Developers do not necessarily need any experience as a sysadmin and I would advise against moving productive developers into this role for the purpose of misguided training. The argument about understanding how code scales beyond one computer is fallacious. In fact it's quite easy to learn and practice all kinds of distributed high scale architectures without getting up from a desk. I will agree it's important to…
The mindset that you are describing is why that "devops engineer" that gets hired so very often ends up being burnt at both ends being the savior of the team because, unlike the developers, he or she does understand both sides of the equation and is able to solve the problems that the incurious developer cannot. I would strongly urge that you reconsider.
And, for your own sake, please excise the word "fallacious" from your vocabulary. It will help you, I promise.
No. Developers do not necessarily need any experience as a sysadmin and I would advise against moving productive developers into this role for the purpose of misguided training. The argument about understanding how code scales beyond one computer is fallacious. In fact it's quite easy to learn and practice all kinds of distributed high scale architectures without getting up from a desk. I will agree it's important to…
I strongly disagree with this, from experience. There is no difference between a "developer" and a "sysadmin" in a healthy shop in 2016. It's all the same job. Until you actually put something into practice in a hostile environment you have no idea what rakes are going to be in that yard. I would be a bad developer if I did not understand how the systems my code runs on worked. I would be a bad sysadmin if I couldn't…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I strongly disagree with this, from experience. There is no difference between a "developer" and a "sysadmin" in a healthy shop in 2016. It's all the same job. Until you actually put something into practice in a hostile environment you have no idea what rakes are going to be in that yard. I would be a bad developer if I did not understand how the systems my code runs on worked. I would be a bad sysadmin if I couldn't…
Thank you for re-wording the 3rd paragraph before I could complain about it :-)
...also, man, don't tell me you're on Hacker News while you're camping...
With the rise of devops (docker, puppet, ansible, etc...) , and cloud VMs, how often are sysadmins different from software devs?
That question doesn't make any sense at all. That's exactly the same as saying: with the rise of do it yourself home repair, how often are plumbers different from carpenters?
Chef etc. aren't "home repair." (Well, maybe Docker, and it shows.) They're a way of expressing subject matter knowledge. Still gotta be a developer to do that expressing in a way that isn't going to kill you, either directly or because you write code that your fellows burn you at the stake for.