Best scripting/programming language to learn from an Ops perspective
by Alpha01
Background
Knowing some sort of programming is an absolute must for any systems administrator. Hell, even in the Microsoft world, the necessity can’t be anymore apparent with the creation of PowerShell. So what is the best language to learn for a beginner? This is a question that many junior sysadmins or students asked themselves when starting of.
Having been a systems administrator for well over eight years now, and worked with Bash, Perl, PHP, Python, and Ruby extensively within those eight years. I think this is a two part answer. In my opinion the best language to start is Bash/shell. Bash/shell is everywhere. Having an advanced Bash knowledge automatically makes you a better sysadmin. This is because Bash/shell scripting is practically glued to other external *nix userland tools (grep, sort, tail, awk, sed, etc..). Knowing Bash extensively, makes you a better command line user. The second of the answer to which is the best scripting/programming language to learn, depends on what environment you work in, or want to work in. If you work or want to work in a Ruby on Rails shop, then obviously you would want to opt learn Ruby, likewise if you work in a WordPress shop, you should opt for learning PHP.
Programming vs Scripting
A systems administrator is NOT a software engineer. There is a huge difference between scripting some sort of convoluted process (automation) and in architecting a complex piece of software. So it is important to acknowledge that the skill set between the both is not the same. Most of the religious wars between a programming language preference people love to display on the internet, is mainly from a developers perspective. Whether the arguments are valid or not, in my opinion they are irrelevant from a sysadmin’s point of view. Basically we must know how to use an API and not necessarily how to create one. While in fact it helps to know how to construct your objects by knowing how to create elegant classes, methods, and attributes. It’s not vital for a sysadmin to know the exact details on how the API/library was created.
Programming Experience
Once you know a scripting language reasonably well. By knowing either Ruby, Perl, Python, or PHP, you practically can’t avoid being already familiar with any of the other scripting languages mentioned. These languages are so similar, it’s fairly easy to pick up book and learn another scripting language in a short time span.
It’s no secret Ruby is my favorite language, however I’m not overly religious about it. It’s not the end of the world if I don’t get to use Ruby everyday. In fact, if I need to write a script really fast. Usually my first choices are either Bash or Perl. This is mainly because these are the languages I’ve known the longest, and for reason I’m able to program in much faster. For me it all boils down to which language will take me less time hack around with and which tool is best for the job. This usually means, is there an existing program, API/library out there that does much of the work I need to solve my problem.
Thus said, when I first started my career, Bash and Perl the defacto scripting languages for a *nix admin to know, now in days it seems Python and Ruby are what companies prefer. Even now with the popularity of NodeJS, soon JavaScript will come into the front along with the other traditional major scripting languages.
Happy hacking!
Tags: [php perl go python bash ruby