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I don't need a VPS anymore

greenash.net.au

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Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#191

Post by dijit »

pnathan wrote: post #171
dijit wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a common (new) myth that sysadmins didn’t code. There were some IT technicians who couldn’t code and some operations staff who couldn’t code (and would proudly claim this, for some reason). But tools like ansible, salt, chef and terraform were written by sysadmins. In fact a lot of non-feature code in my companies such as database fencing programs and automated blue/green rollouts has been written by sysadmins.…

What's really interesting is that I've run into a lot of sysadmins who can't/don't code; its a continual surprise to me. Writing Perl to manage a system was just part of the deal back when (dating myself now. :) ).

I think that given people don’t believe now that sysadmins used to write a fair chunk of code; what has happened is people hiring “sysadmins” these days don’t make coding a part of the job.

Thus, sysadmins today are doing what helpdesk and system operators used to do 15 years ago. Which means it is now true that sysadmins don’t code, due to a weirdly shifted perception over time and that perception becoming self-fulfilling.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#192

Post by TheNewsIsHere »

dijit wrote: post #191
pnathan wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's really interesting is that I've run into a lot of sysadmins who can't/don't code; its a continual surprise to me. Writing Perl to manage a system was just part of the deal back when (dating myself now. :) ).

I think that given people don’t believe now that sysadmins used to write a fair chunk of code; what has happened is people hiring “sysadmins” these days don’t make coding a part of the job. Thus, sysadmins today are doing what helpdesk and system operators used to do 15 years ago. Which means it is now true that sysadmins don’t code, due to a weirdly shifted perception over time and that perception becoming self-fulf…

This is something that annoys me. I’m most comfortable identifying as a sysadmin for a few reasons. I spend a lot of my time on problems that don’t make sense to automate. I spend my time at the code level building automation tooling instead of creating or debugging application code. Historically I have often spent my time with developers guiding them on how what they’re doing fits into a broader ecosystem, teaching them something both critical and esoteric about the application so that they can do their job better, and often guiding them on specs.

It’s not everyone’s experience, but my experience has been that a lot of developers who don’t have a sysadmin background aren’t as skilled at those things. The business analysis, cost control, or the application meets infrastructure parts. Case in point, one of my best friends and frequent professional collaborators is a pure-programming guy who works in AWS. He knows everything there is to know about provisioning the most common AWS resources via CloudFormation and Terraform, but I have never seen him demonstrate a realistic understanding of costs or _why_ certain resources are used in lieu of others, or a strong aptitude in optimizing for specific workloads and business cases. If he hits on an area that is “traditionally” sysadmin work, it’s deer in the headlights.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#193

Post by npsimons »

cutler wrote: post #188
npsimons wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nginx with a reverse proxy to Rails, Django, Express or Laravel /me over here reverse proxying to Hunchentoot with CL framework of the week. Have yet to see a serverless setup that even has any idea what CL is . . .

Why would a serverless setup need to know anything about CL if it's just exposing an API endpoint?

CL is Common Lisp.

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#196

Post by ricktdotorg »

ZetaZero wrote: post #156
ricktdotorg wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe serverless is a fad, but it can be a very useful one to reduce costs. our corp IT ops group has a google sheet that tracks staff's g suite/workspace-MDM'd corp mobile phones (is the OS updated? are the MDM policies up to date? when did the phone last check in, etc). the sheet is auto-updated every few minutes by a few lightweight cloud functions in GCP that query a few google APIs, state is stored in Datastore.…

I want to know more, please

it's all here https://github.com/rickt/gsuitemdm

Re: I don't need a VPS anymore

#197

Post by conquistadog »

trey-jones wrote: post #57

I might need some perspective. Every time I read one of these I'm just shaking my head, and yes the arguments are Less Power, Less Control, but also SysAdmin is me. That is my identity, and the part of the job that I like the most. I solve problems with configuration before code. So I hate to think that I'm becoming obsolete, of course. I also don't think that I am, because I do think that my way has some clear and d…

> there is still room for my ilk in the tech world.

There is. I'm trying to hire more of it as we speak.

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