Scripting Overview

2 minute read


IT is getting to the point to where all professionals will soon be judged solely on how well they script for an OS over anything else. The days of “point and click administration” are gone. If you don’t learn command line and how an OS works behind the scenes, your days are limited in IT. This is nothing new to the Linux world, but some MS admins will have to learn the hard way.

Many people have heard of the term “DevOps” which is essentially developers who take on roles in the operations side of IT. Here is my spill on it…

Traditionally, there has always been two sides to IT:

  1. Developers who code applications and scripts but know little about infrastructure, networking, ect. These guys usually have CS degrees.

  2. IT guys who know about infrastructure, networking, and OS related issues but little about building applications. The guys usually have IS/IT degrees.

I can see a point in the future where IT is a commodity and professionals will not have salaried positions, but rather, everyone will be contractors hired to “support the infrastructure” which means building, maintaining, and decommissioning company IT infrastructure and applications. In this world, every professional will have to know how the OS they support works behind the scenes which is not always command line, but at least the administrative applications used to control the network. Will programmers still have jobs that involve infrastructure/networking/etc? You bet. Will infra guys still skate by without having to develop applications? You bet. The market will always be segmented in this way, but the majority of stable jobs will probably end up going to those who know how to do both.

I chose my career as the infra guy and take this trend in that I need to learn how to script, like yesterday. I have already been to interviews where potential employers are asking who to run certain commands, what scripts I have used, or how I would perform a specific task using only command line (server core is a common thing due to low footprint/attack surface). So if you are on the blah side of getting into scripting, just know that the future will most certainly cater to those who took the time to learn how the OS they support works on the inside and your days of “next, next, next, finish” are limited.

Where is the evidence to back this up? I have none, just my opinion based off industry experience. I could be wrong so take it with a grain of salt.