Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience • Hacker News Board

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#421

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

falcolas wrote: post #202

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…

Sysadmins are, 99% of the time, responsible for production uptime. Sadly, management includes all of the software being written in-house in this expectation. Change means instability, means that Sysadmins' feet are held to the fire - this makes them resistant to change. Software developers, on the other hand, are responsible for making changes. Adding features, pushing fixes, and so forth. These two points of view ar…

[deleted]

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#422

Post by cs02rm0 » Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 11:33 PM UTC

technofiend wrote: post #170

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…

>Often this stuff goes more smoothly where the developers (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) manage production and there aren't people with separate job titles and the resulting friction between them. This is not personal criticism but you know how I know you're not working in a highly regulated environment? Check out the Carnegie Mellon Ca…

> Have you ever had to explain to someone that a java out of memory error had nothing do with the fact that linux is using otherwise idle memory to buffer i/o and that they're misreading top output? That the actual issue is their object management and just increasing the JVM's heap size is at best a bandaid?

I've not seen a professional developer be confused about Linux using otherwise idle memory to buffer, no. I have seen that with sysadmins who mostly look after Windows boxes and were somewhat unfairly dropped in at the deep end.

I've seen JVM heap OOM errors be caused by both object management issues and applications that would legitimately benefit from larger heap sizes. Many, many times.

I think I'd fall off my seat if I saw a sysadmin use JMX to find an issue. I did see a security guy (so not really a sysadmin, but he was doing a related job) use strace once. He was remarkable enough to have his own Wikipedia page.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#423

Post by cs02rm0 » Fri, Jan 13, 2017, 11:35 PM UTC

jstimpfle wrote: post #349

monocasa wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I've heard worse out of sysadmins in some places.

Question: What must go wrong for a build to be 180x slower on a server than on a laptop?

Using an EC2 t2.nano instance for a build server.

When they're out of CPU credits it's game over.

Re: Software Developers Should Have Sysadmin Experience

#424

Post by tzakrajs » Sat, Jan 14, 2017, 1:22 AM UTC

divanvisagie wrote: post #158

tzakrajs wrote: post #155

I have ten years of experience in systems and have written tools software in Python and Javascript for Netflix, Stanford University and Google (current). I have never been a software engineer officially, but I want to be. I am a PC gamer, anime lover, and a proud SJW. Any takers?

What are you on about?

I am interested in finding positions. Sorry if my post was ambiguous, I know it is a bit out of place here.