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Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

blog.professorbeekums.com

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Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#111

Post by ahmedk92 »

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…

I think yes.

I see no harm in one having basic experience in multiple fields. Especially when those fields are related. Actually, this concept I kind of "market" it among my circles. A mobile developer should know the basics of web development and vice versa. That way they communicate better.

I claim that already happens naturally. It's our drive to quickly build a niche (e.g. "I'm a professional X developer"), in addition to insecurities that lead to saying "X is not my responsibility", is what gets in the way of expanding our fields of expertise.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#113

Post by b212 »

I'm a front-end developer with very little knowledge of sysadmin stuff, but I can't agree more, the best developers I've ever seen had massive sysadmin experience.

Can you point some good resources about sysadmin I could use to improve my knowledge on the subject? Note I'm a noob when it comes to all this server-side magic.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#114

Post by rtpg »

iamphilrae wrote: post #82
rtpg wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with most of the list but why is TCP important for frontend developers? I'm struggling to find the arc for that one that isn't abstracted away much like CPU pipelines are for back end devs.

A front end developer should understand that a TCP request (i.e what an HTTP request is) consists of a handshake which means to receive a file from a server, it takes roughly 5/6 calls to and from the server. So if your UI consists of 1000 100b files, that's 6000 calls. So you would probably be better concatenating them to a single 10Kb file. But then you need to understand the differences between HTTP 1.1 and 2.0 an…

I guess my point was more that even just if you understand HTTP then you'll get all those insights already. A bit pedantic I suppose.

This stuff does get pretty complicated. Mainly because the tech is evolving fast (browsers do a lot of tricks now). Even in HTTP 1.1, there are times where multiple files might be more interesting due to how large files are handled

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#115

Post by AliAdams »

The underpinning logic seems false.

To extend the analogy of the house on a slope, if you don't tell the developer you need a house designed to be built on a slope, that is a problem with the spec provided to the developer.

Although it can at times be more efficient for a dev to have sysadmin experience, making blanket statements requiring all developers to come with such a background is just sensationalism.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#116

Post by vinceguidry »

I think the problem here is that decent admin jobs are getting harder to come by these days. Used to be any reasonable organization needed an admin just to keep systems straight, now they all rely on less-skilled help desk types and make it up with outsourcing companies, which in turn are shedding personnel and relying on big vendor contracts rather than individual skills.

I predict sysadmin culture and skills will be the next Fortran.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#118

Post by ab1243 »

bdcravens wrote: post #41
kahrkunne wrote: post #7

On top of the 20 years of experience we already require of junior developers?

Probably preferable to calling someone a developer after a 12 week bootcamp.

Just make sure they're 22, 23 tops. Can't have any of those 30+ year olds with their early onset dementia.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#119

Post by LoSboccacc »

cs02rm0 wrote: post #50

This might be controversial, but I don't think you get to be a half decent developer without being a reasonable sysadmin. Maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never worked anywhere that the sysadmins knew more than the developers about how best to run their code in production. And when things go wrong with it how best to find the cause of the issue. And I've never thrown code over a wall without having tested it…

> thrown code over a wall without having tested it

this is the weirdest part of the whole devops mantra. like, I know how to evaluate the complexity and memory requirement of code way before I write it and I guess most compsci should be able to do the same.

so either it's yet one more attempt in getting cheap labor into workable territory or plenty people where this myth originated are being cheated out of their money for a graduated curriculum that teaches nothing of value.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#120

Post by pjc50 »

sagichmal wrote: post #80
cs02rm0 wrote: post #50

This might be controversial, but I don't think you get to be a half decent developer without being a reasonable sysadmin. Maybe my experience is unusual, but I've never worked anywhere that the sysadmins knew more than the developers about how best to run their code in production. And when things go wrong with it how best to find the cause of the issue. And I've never thrown code over a wall without having tested it…

> I mean, it's not as though if you're going to drop one of the two groups of people it's going to be them going I'm sorry you've had such an awful experience with sysadmin colleagues that you've developed such a corrosive attitude towards them. I've worked in lots of good environments, where dev/ops was being effectively practiced, and sysadmins there were the most effective force multipliers imaginable.

> awful experience with sysadmin colleagues that you've developed such a corrosive attitude

This is going to be a sensitive topic, but can we talk about ""BOFH"" culture somewhere on this thread? (Maybe I'm old and it's now dead, but I think some of it persists)

I kind of understand it as a product of working in an environment where everything is urgent and nothing is appreciated, but when sysadmins come to resent the people they're supposed to be supporting then the force multiplier turns negative. Sysadmins develop strategies for reducing the number of requests at any cost, usually by making the experience as opaque and unhelpful as possible.

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