System Admins Should Know How To Code

snydeq writes "You don't need to be a programmer, but you'll solve harder problems faster if you can write your own code, writes Paul Venezia. 'The fact is, while we may know several programming languages to varying degrees, most IT ninjas aren't developers, per se. I've put in weeks and months of work on various large coding projects, but that's certainly not how I spend most of my time. Frankly, I don't think I could just write code day in and day out, but when I need to develop a tool to deal with a random problem, I dive right in. ... It's not a vocation, and it's not a clear focus of the job, but it's a substantial weapon when tackling many problems. I'm fairly certain that if all I did was write Perl, I'd go insane.'"

Comments

Another skill we will only get underpaid for

[NetNinja]

The ammount of skills Network admins should know and still get paid a 10th of what we are worth is ridiculous.

I should be making close to 300k a year, Do you think any company would pay that?

So now I need to add codder to the resume which will effectively fall on my shoulders to maintain code? Bad idea.

I guess I should be happy and count my lucky stars that I have a job?

The one thing I have noticed in companies that Sales weasels get paid a lot more money than I and the responsibility lies on the network admin to keep it all running.

Perl

[slapout]

So, does Perl drive you crazy or do you have to be crazy to program in Perl?

Re:Not only admins

[Mr2cents]

You're right. But you could always write a script to flip the axes, might come in handy if you encounter similar graphs ;-).

Re:Very true, for many reasons.

[LongearedBat]

make a configuration change across, say, 2000 devices (or in our case, several million)

Running a bot net, are ya?