Re: AWK As A Major Systems Programming Language

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

When I graduated from university, I wanted to become a programmer, but
at that time, only 10+ years of experience was wanted on the job
market, so life decided that I should work in infrastructure/system
administration instead.

>
I always thought of system administration as a programming job.  In
fact, a fun one.  Initially I wanted to be a UNIX system administrator.

Yes, having worked as one, I can see that. For me, the pleasure was
always in automation, and the quick feedback loops. I would work on a
piece of the infra-stack, automate as much as possible, and you can do
that in small cycles of days and weeks, instead of the endless bug
hunting the developers at one of my jobs did, in some kind of million+
line CAD software. I always got the feeling talking with them, that
their job would never end, and you would only see small,
micro-incremental improvements stretching over years.
Mean while, I'd happily automate my systems, deployments, reports,
statistics etc. so yes, some kind of programming always was there during
my time as a linux/unix system administrator.

But my professional life began in a web world when most jobs I could get
were all web related.  Deep web projects always involve UNIX
programming, but I was never really hired for deep projects.  As a
result, I kept doing web programming to pay bills.  So I had to study
and invent projects in order to study the other sides of computer
science so I would not spend my life with technology and culture I did
not even appreciate.  That actually paid off.  For the first time in my
life, I can say I really like my job.

Happy to hear it! =)