<quote who="Rick Welykochy"> > I've always pondered where to draw the line between sys admin and > programmer /analyst.
Wherever you draw it, draw if very firmly. Sysadmins should not write code, coders should not administer systems. Heinous crimes are committed when the streams are crossed! > Many sys admins I work with can whip up shell scripts and are whizzes at > handling utilities and such in the shell. But often they are not adept at > designing software systems and implementing them. No offense, admins, but > it is a different discipline. Absolutely. But the inverse is also true. :-) > Which raises the question: does it require a programmer to handle and > correctly execute complex command-line programs like convert, etc. as > found in Imagemagick? Naw, those are pretty straightforward if you have the mind-set for them. I'd venture that ImageMagick is not exactly the most useable suite of command line tools. :-) > As an aside, my brain begins weeping when I have to do something novel > with iptables (another command-line monster) but I don't consider that a > programming job. I get the impression many Linux admins can configure > iptables in the dark without a keyboard and both hands preoccupied with > beer and pizza. iptables is firewall assembly language. There are other things that provide the equivalent of portable sugary description (equivalent to C in the code ecosystem), concise object-oriented approaches (equivalent to languages such as Python), and even visual approaches (logo for firewall designers!). - Jeff -- GUADEC 2008: Istanbul, Turkey http://www.guadec.org/ "GNOME, launched specifically to counter a threat to our freedom, is the free software project par excellence." - Richard Stallman -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
