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Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

blog.professorbeekums.com

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Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#51

Post by 0xC0DECAFE2020 »

Aloha wrote: post #39
nokya wrote: post #37

I'd say there is too much effort in reasoning on the wrong problem. What worries me the most is the 'why': why do (too) many software developers don't know about sysadmin? I have been involved as a consultant in large software projects in the last two years and a vast majority of money lost in delays and bugs was caused by devs not understanding: 1) the difference between virtual memory and physical memory 2) the dif…

I've worked with all kinds - from windows devs who can't figure out how to install visual studio - to people who understand Windows, Linux, and macOS - as well as basic system administration for each platform. The people who are most successful at rapidly developing good high quality software are more in the later group. Would you trust a RF engineer who couldn't troubleshoot his own radio designs? why would you trou…

I recently questioned someone about this very subject. They wanted to hire a "CSS expert" because the "developer" didn't have a grasp of css after having developed the project in JS/HTML. I was so confused as to how that's possible.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#52

Post by seanwilson »

I think everyone would benefit if they learned just a small amount about what their team members have to deal with. For example, project managers should learn a little about what programming involves while managing programmers and graphics+UX designers should learn a little about coding to make their designs more practical (i.e. identifying cases where a slightly better design requires a massive amount more coding effort and probably isn't worth it).

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#53

Post by bpchaps »

Aloha wrote: post #39
nokya wrote: post #37

I'd say there is too much effort in reasoning on the wrong problem. What worries me the most is the 'why': why do (too) many software developers don't know about sysadmin? I have been involved as a consultant in large software projects in the last two years and a vast majority of money lost in delays and bugs was caused by devs not understanding: 1) the difference between virtual memory and physical memory 2) the dif…

I've worked with all kinds - from windows devs who can't figure out how to install visual studio - to people who understand Windows, Linux, and macOS - as well as basic system administration for each platform. The people who are most successful at rapidly developing good high quality software are more in the later group. Would you trust a RF engineer who couldn't troubleshoot his own radio designs? why would you trou…

In fairness to the folk who can't install Visual Studio - it's a genuine pain in the butt.

Last time I tried, half of the download links were absolutely non-functional. Their documentation didn't help much, either, since they pointed to the non-functioning links. I got a lot of shit for that one, but felt completely vindicated when it happened to someone else a year later.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#54

Post by BurningFrog »

nokya wrote: post #37

I'd say there is too much effort in reasoning on the wrong problem. What worries me the most is the 'why': why do (too) many software developers don't know about sysadmin? I have been involved as a consultant in large software projects in the last two years and a vast majority of money lost in delays and bugs was caused by devs not understanding: 1) the difference between virtual memory and physical memory 2) the dif…

I'm a quite good programmer who is a pretty terrible sys admin.

Of your 11 points, I understand 1-10 quite well, but I'm not great at 11.

I think the skill sets are quite different, despite the fact that a lot of people have both. I was never really that "into computers", but I have a burning passion for building large software systems fast and well.

Metaphor: I love to travel to exotic locations across the planet. That doesn't mean I'm also interested in building airplane engines.

To be clear, I'm not bragging. It would be great if I was good at this stuff.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#55

Post by jordache »

Just like how you typically distinguish front and back end developers, went wouldn't you distinguish dev from devops?

Sure, it helps if an individual is not entirely myopic, and would be great if that person can wear multiple hats with skillset spanning all those disciplines.

However those different labels exist primarily they align to unique mindsets and solutions to a problem in a mutually exclusive manner.

Do you want a jack of all, but master of non?

Seriously, how many individual out there do you think have the capacity to develop their career so they have deep capabilities for all of those disciplines?

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#57

Post by PaulRobinson »

I worked for an ISP in the late 90s/early 2000s for about a year before my final year at Uni that when I started had 2,000 customers and by the time I left we'd got to 750k customers.

It was the best training I could have for writing software for the Internet. Just a couple of months ago we noticed one of our core apps was not scaling no matter how many docker containers we had spun up in Mesos. Spent a week breaking it apart using that experience and being able to make changes directly to the code base and being able to talk to devops in a language they understood, and in under 5 days we managed to identify and fix 7-8 different issues.

I would value a dev with sysadmin experience _far_ higher than one without in a tech business with a headcount under 500: it's going to lead to fewer problems and issues in the short and medium term.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#58

Post by PaulRobinson »

pjmorris wrote: post #12

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)?

Yes. Where I work, they're all expected to be able to cut code. They might pair with devs at various stages, but a sysadmin who can't write code isn't going to be able to work with some of the more modern frameworks for orchestrations because they are in essence DSLs: they _are_ code.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#59

Post by danenania »

eropple wrote: post #43
danenania wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's true for backend, but frontend developers don't necessarily need a lot of ops knowledge if the team has a good separation of concerns. If frontend devs have to worry much about sys admin issues, I'd say that likely points to a flaw in the way things are being done. Of course, the more someone knows, the better. Knowledge and experience in any area of technology can improve understanding of all the others. But…

I think your definition of "sysadmin issues" is probably a little more limited than mine or 'wpietri's. I've had frontend developers insist that they could bake configuration settings into their webpacked artifact...which needed to be deployed into multiple environments because of course we weren't rebuilding something that had already been okayed in QA when we wanted to send it to prod. You might say that's not a "s…

I would consider that sort of thing to be part of the required basic knowledge to be a competent frontend dev, so if you want to call that sys admin, then sure, there's a bit of it involved. If it's on your side of the fence then yes, it's your responsibility. I'm not sure how many actual sys admins would consider configuring webpack to be 'sys admin knowledge', but there is a spectrum and it's true that there are some ABCs that everyone needs to know, particularly when there are security implications. Still, it's a pretty far cry from unix, web servers, and databases.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#60

Post by teekert »

I think many professions should have sysadmin knowledge. In my work (biology) there is a lot of unnecessary clicking, not only in Excel (where Python/R would be much more efficient) but also in web interfaces to transfer data daily. The latter is often completely automatable using cron and rsync over ssh. Many repetitive actions are a shell script or command line pipe away. But people don't know.
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