What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#1

Post by edwcar13 » Wed, May 11, 2016, 6:08 AM UTC

I don't have much experience in my new career and am wondering what I should learn or brush up on. I want to either avoid or be able to maneuver quickly around these headaches.

Essentially you can blow off some steam here about your day to day tech troubles. :)

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#2

Post by executesorder66 » Wed, May 11, 2016, 6:17 AM UTC

My biggest frustration at work is having to use windows. Mainly because of the MS Exchange mail server. I could use webmail on linux, but then I don't get the calendar reminders and I'd be late for everything. There is also one or two admin applications that require Internet explorer(WTF this is 2016) So if you could learn how to force your company to ditch anything related to Microsoft you will have the time of your life.

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#3

Post by adnansaleem » Wed, May 11, 2016, 7:38 AM UTC

When you have to Debug some one's shitty code...

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#4

Post by serpix » Wed, May 11, 2016, 7:51 AM UTC

Traditional infrastructure. after doing a few projects with cloud based deployment I am now at a loss of words for the frustration of having to order a server, wait for it for weeks. Get it with insufficient ram, firewall locked out, it's shared by twenty other developers and I have to deploy using chef because that's what we always use.

All this is so behind the times the waste of time and money is appalling.

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#5

Post by skiltz » Wed, May 11, 2016, 7:53 AM UTC

Not having a decent mentor. Self taught working as a solo developer. Don't know what I don't know. If I had someone to peer review code or bounce idea's off then I could have progressed a lot faster. If I could start again I would join a development team and learn from developers with a lot more experience.

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#6

Post by shoo » Wed, May 11, 2016, 8:23 AM UTC

working on systems that don't have automated tests, and are designed such that adding automated tests is not easy.

you don't have to practice TDD, but it is a fantastic idea to add automated tests early on when the architecture of your system is still fresh and changeable.

projects that don't consider "testability" as a requirement tend to produce system architectures that are not testable.

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#7

Post by pandeyalok » Wed, May 11, 2016, 9:35 AM UTC

dealing with unmaintainable coding experts

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#8

Post by max_ » Wed, May 11, 2016, 10:30 AM UTC

Mainly authentication credentials.

Managing SSH keys, and Passwords

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#9

Post by fazza99 » Wed, May 11, 2016, 10:36 AM UTC

Everythng that's repetitious and error-prone: Manual migrations of old physical servers, disaster-recovery, managing legacy infrastructure. Luckily, most of these have been obviated by the cloud, thank god. I became a sysadmin to work on interesting projects, not to endlessly reset AD user credentials. Granted there is a level of repetition in any job, but when the process becomes to the job, it's time to automate.

Re: What are the biggest headaches as a developer or systems admin?

#10

Post by dozzie » Wed, May 11, 2016, 11:33 AM UTC

shoo wrote: post #6

working on systems that don't have automated tests, and are designed such that adding automated tests is not easy. you don't have to practice TDD, but it is a fantastic idea to add automated tests early on when the architecture of your system is still fresh and changeable. projects that don't consider "testability" as a requirement tend to produce system architectures that are not testable.

Projects that consider "testability" as a requirement tend to produce systems that are perfectly testable, but this is orthogonal to whether the architecture makes sense and can be composed with something else.