Re: AWK As A Major Systems Programming Language

On Mon, 2 Sep 2024, Johanne Fairchild wrote:

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.

>
I recognize all of the above.  But I think there's an even stronger
point for system administration back then.  When I got introduced to
UNIX systems, it was a time where there were UNIX users and people would
still share the system.  So UNIX administrators did programming that
everyone around the system noticed.  There were mailing lists, NNTP
servers and IRC servers so that people living the same area could talk
to on a daily basis.  Getting online and seeing there were people online
too was a joy.

Interesting point. Yes, I think there is a strong case for the system
administrator to have been put back into the closet. At many big
universities and companies, these types of services you mention, have
been outsourced and are purchased "as a service". The system
administrator only takes care of backend system, and probably the only
ones who do interact with him are the developers and/or devops people
(unless the system administrator is of course christened devops at that
company).
Of course there are retro-types who still enjoy email, mailinglists,
usenet, gopher and irc, but they are few and far in between. So I can
definitely see your point here.

The web evolved and computers became cheap, so everyone got their own
and that seems to have isolated everyone.  Instead of talking to your
neighbor, you'd then interact with a lot of people across the world.
System administrators got buried.  We only notice their presence now
when things go completely wrong.  Today, the new generation of
programmers have not even heard of W. Richard Stevens.  I have no idea
how they understand the systems they use.

At the risk of disappointing you, I have no idea who Richard Stevens is.
;) In terms of collaboration, I think for me and my generation, there
were still shared spaces, but self-hosting at that time, on the internet
was out of reach for people who did not go to university. My start in
self-hosting was the humble BBS, and that was an excellent technology
for building a community that also had a local touch.

You offer a shell account to a ``tweenager'' and they decline---thanks,
but no, thanks.  ``I have my own system.''  They see no fun in sharing
in a UNIX system.

Really? I think you must meet more teenagers! I teach, and each class is
roughly divided into thirds. 1/3 don't know what to do in life, and just
sit there. Very tough for a teacher to motivate them. 1/3 at least want
to pass. They are not naturals, but fight through, and a few of them do
discover the passion. Then you have the students that create passion in
the teacher. The top 1/3 (actually I'd say probably closer to 15%-20%).
They take to the whole self-hosting, sysadmin culture like ducks to
water, they explore the packages, they setup their own servers, they
collaborate in teams, so the student who has Gbps internet at home sets
up a server (or laptop) that the others all login to, they create their
own netflix, their own spotify, they play around with nextcloud creating
their own OneDrive and collaboration services.
I still remember one student who came to me 10 months after he started
saying that learning the terminal was the single best thing he ever
learned about computers. All his life, he had pointed and clicked, and
he never realized he could be that efficient and achieve all those
things (his own netflix, spotify etc.) with free software and linux.
So I think there is still a movement, and lots of interest, but I think
that there is perhaps not enough people teaching these things.
What I see in a lot of schools, is plenty of Azure and AWS consultants,
lobbying for the schools dropping linux and moving to "serverless", but
there is hope! I teach the opposite, so there's at least one person
fighting that trend. ;)