I'm An Admin, Why Should I Learn to Code?

Slowhand

Mojo_666 wrote: »

Are these skills not referring to the .net configuration tools and their usage rather than actually coding .net?

In the case of a company like Blizzard, when they say you need to have "a basic understanding of .NET programming", they mean "basic, in comparison to the software developers who work on our games," in addition to understanding the configuration tools. (Your mileage may vary depending on the industry, but this is often the case for video game shops.)

My experience with the studio I worked for was that, in some cases, I had to be smart enough to figure out not only that it was the code itself that was causing the program to hang, but do a little bit of minor debugging in order to find more information about the bug to justify pulling a developer off his or her main assignment in order to look at an application that was already in production; this is, of course, the wost-case scenario where the issue was too complex for me to actually fix myself. If I had gone to the programmers with, "I think it's the code, I'm not finding anything on the server," the first question I'd be asked is, "what can you tell me about the bug so that this won't turn into a full-scale QA project?"

The more I could bring to them the better, otherwise it might be the difference between launching the flagship game in beta on the date announced at E3/GDC, or the whole company (and its investors) looking foolish and waiting while a key developer holds up the works debugging an old application. I was the one reading the error logs, I was the one seeing the error occur as the application ran, and if I could fire up the debugging tools to see and understand what exceptions were being thrown out, for example, then I could bring a much more useful report back to the coders so they could get on with fixing it.

Pash

I think all of the people responding on this thread would agree working in a creative environment such as Blizzard's CA Irvine office would be a dream come true. I won't lie, I have been on their careers page and looked at their office pictures!!!

Anyway, back on point. I agree with some people on this thread. Having medium skills in c#/powershell is beneficial any system admin roles. For the games industry having skills in perl, python, lua anyone? Could be very advantageous.

I guess having skills in css and html isn't so much having skills in markup language's but more the ability to keep up with standards and browser support.

earweed

thenjduke wrote: »

I have been doing this since the Dos 3.2 days and scripting and programming have always been involved in my job. To just understand the basic concept of what you want to do is great and then looking at how to code it is simple. Learning code does not take long it is more learning the syntax for certain languages.

The syntax is the hardest thing for me to remember. Doing the actual programming is relatively easy. As long as I have time and the determinatioin to get a programming project done I could probably do it. I just hate staring at code for hours on end though.

Hyper-Me

Pash wrote: »

Anyway, back on point. I agree with some people on this thread. Having medium skills in c#/powershell is beneficial any system admin roles. For the games industry having skills in perl, python, lua anyone? Could be very advantageous.

Not negating your point here, but having skills in a vast array of areas could be beneficial to a Systems Admin. I think the point this thread is trying to make is that it shouldnt be a core requirement of a Sys Admin job for someone to also be an expert in C#, .NET, etc......Now batch scripting, PowerShell and utilizing WMI would be a different story.

RobertKaucher

Slowhand wrote: »

The more I could bring to them the better, otherwise it might be the difference between launching the flagship game in beta on the date announced at E3/GDC, or the whole company (and its investors) looking foolish and waiting while a key developer holds up the works debugging an old application. I was the one reading the error logs, I was the one seeing the error occur as the application ran, and if I could fire up the debugging tools to see and understand what exceptions were being thrown out, for example, then I could bring a much more useful report back to the coders so they could get on with fixing it.

At my current job we are having an issue with a team of developers. There seems to be a good deal of politics, which I am too new to fully understand, but a lot of it seems to come down to the fact that they do not trust that we can actually do what it is that is needed. I think being able to talk .NET with them is helping to get accross the point that we are not *just* a bunch of server monkeys.

RobertKaucher

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Not negating your point here, but having skills in a vast array of areas could be beneficial to a Systems Admin. I think the point this thread is trying to make is that it shouldnt be a core requirement of a Sys Admin job for someone to also be an expert in C#, .NET, etc......Now batch scripting, PowerShell and utilizing WMI would be a different story.

If you are good with poSh I would argue you are 25% of the way to a strong foundation on the .NET Framework and a jump to C# would not be that hard.

Pash

RobertKaucher wrote: »

If you are good with poSh I would argue you are 25% of the way to a strong foundation on the .NET Framework and a jump to C# would not be that hard.

Yeh that was kind of my point Hyper-Me. Sorry if I didnt express it that way. Powershell will kind of make c# look alright to you with object notations etc.

Lots of job postings are like this now though, they want value for money for whom the recruit. They wont always get someone with all those skills and no offence to Slowhand, but hes picked out the creme de le creme of sys admin jobs there. I am sure ultimately the people they get for those jobs will have a braod skill set but also be very adaptable to what they need to do day to day. I mean, just read above to see dynamiks example. The poor lad has done it all (no rude remarks afterwards please), hes now onto security. You could argue his skillset prior to security is perfect for picking up on well known cve's in his line of work.

I am sure you wouldn't have had to write countless apps to be considered for the role...just a few here and there.

Anyway, for anyone looking to have a look at c# and .net I do recommend Paul Hudsons Coding Academy for linux format. It's kind of relevant because it also mentions cross platform development with mono as well. It wont teach you everything but it will set you on your way to start getting creative.

earweed

@Pash- You set us up and then say not to have fun with it. The mag is probably not available anywhere, it's not on ebay.

Hyper-Me

RobertKaucher wrote: »

If you are good with poSh I would argue you are 25% of the way to a strong foundation on the .NET Framework and a jump to C# would not be that hard.

Perhaps, but can you finish that 75% before there is a new release of Sharepoint Server, SCOM, SCCM, SCVMM, SCDPM, Windows Client, Windows Server, ISA/TMG, whatever AV product you use, Whatever backup product you use (if not dpm), Exchange, SQL, etc etc.

It's hard enough to simply stay up to date once you've learned the core suite of enterprise software from MS and some supplemental software.

Slowhand

Pash wrote: »

They wont always get someone with all those skills and no offence to Slowhand, but hes picked out the creme de le creme of sys admin jobs there.

No offence taken. Showcasing a top-notch 'dream job' as the kind of thing you could be doing if you don't limit yourself too much was the point of my rant.

RobertKaucher

Hyper-Me wrote: »

Perhaps, but can you finish that 75% before there is a new release of Sharepoint Server, SCOM, SCCM, SCVMM, SCDPM, Windows Client, Windows Server, ISA/TMG, whatever AV product you use, Whatever backup product you use (if not dpm), Exchange, SQL, etc etc.

It's hard enough to simply stay up to date once you've learned the core suite of enterprise software from MS and some supplemental software.

Well, I'm not arguing that you need to be a programmer to be an excellent admin. But I am of the opinion that it can be important in one's career. Especially if you are working with SharePoint and SQL Server.

A lot of the things I do in C# with SharePoint are probably just as easy to do in PoSh because all of the objects and methods are the same. It's not really high-level stuff but I do it in C# because I think it has some aspects that make it easier like error handling. When it comes to SQL Server there are thing I that are exceptionally easy to do in C# but require a lot of coding in T-SQL and it's so much easier to make a CLR stored procedure.

I spend 80% of my week doing server admin type stuff. But for the rest I could not get it done without a jr. level knowledge of C# and some good PoSh skills.

ChronusMaximus

As someone who has only had a year in IT so far I have a question for you seasoned vets:

I want to do security eventually and want to be able to hold my own on programming but how do you guys keep your programming/scripting skills sharp? I feel that if I am not using it on a day-to-day basis I lose it pretty quick. It has only been one semester since my last programming class and between studying for the CCNA and work I can barely find time to practice programming.

Great thread btw.

dynamik

ChronusMaximus wrote: »

I want to do security eventually and want to be able to hold my own on programming but how do you guys keep your programming/scripting skills sharp? I feel that if I am not using it on a day-to-day basis I lose it pretty quick. It has only been one semester since my last programming class and between studying for the CCNA and work I can barely find time to practice programming.

Nothing to do except practice. If you're not using it for work, create an instructional blog or just write programs as a challenge to get some practice. Come up with a problem you want to solve and see if you can do it. For the language(s) you want to keep fresh, pick up a Cookbook, Wicked Cool Scripts, etc. style book and see if you can create the "recipe," script, or whatever on your own first and then review how the author did it. Even if you only do a couple of those per week, it will keep you sharp.

Claymoore

That explains the pile of dung that is Starcraft II - their Windows admins wrote it. I would say steaming pile of dung, but that would imply a level of freshness and, after a 10 year wait, there is nothing fresh about that game. Also, based on that job description, Blizzard is not a place where I would want to work. I would guess that they run too lean and their teams are difficult to manage, which could also explain why we waited 10 years for what is essentially the second expansion pack for Starcraft.

The very foundation of human civilization is division of labor. As soon as we stopped living a nomadic, hunting and gathering life, we needed to specialize to prosper. As the population expands, it is possible to further specialize the labor divisions and productivity for the entire population improves. We begin to leverage concepts like economies of practice where people get better at things they do every day. When the population shrinks, it is not always possible to maintain the levels of specialization and productivity for everyone suffers - see Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire or after the Black Death.

The 'population' in this case is the employees of the company. You typically see Jack-of-all-Trade admins at small companies where the population does not support increased specialization. While they may do many tasks, they do not do them all well. When companies lay off people you have a population decrease that lessens specialization by requiring the rest of us to pick up the slack. Now the guy who supported Exchange also has to maintain the company website and both platforms suffer because of it.

There is a difference between 5 years of experience and 1 year of experience 5 times. If you want to be great at something, focus on that and learn all you can about that topic. You should pick up the supporting technologies along the way - enough AD, storage and networking to be able to troubleshoot Exchange for example - but always come back to your area of specialization. Definitely learn some type of scripting language, such as PoSh, Perl or even VBscript to automate as many of your daily tasks as possible. But a Windows admin diving into .Net without the intention of switching careers isn't going to do anyone any good. That is time that could have been spent furthering your knowledge of your core skills.

veritas_libertas

@Dynamik: So you don't understand Japanese at all?

dynamik

Claymoore wrote: »

Also, based on that job description, Blizzard is not a place where I would want to work. I would guess that they run too lean and their teams are difficult to manage,

I really wonder how much the Activision merger affected that. Blizzard always seemed to be about the games while Activision is more (a lot more) profit-driven.

Claymoore wrote: »

which could also explain why we waited 10 years for what is essentially the second expansion pack for Starcraft.

Right. Although, I have to admit that as an RPG junkie, I really liked the RPG elements that were added. I'm a fan of the lore too, so it was interesting to see the story unfold. Having said that, I often went through the combat as fast as I could, and I have no interest in playing the multiplayer whatsoever. I had more fun watching the cinematics than I did playing the game...

veritas_libertas wrote: »

@Dynamik: So you don't understand Japanese at all?

No, that would be nihongo wa zenzen wakarimasen. I don't understand anything at all. A lot of Japanese is implied, so you can really infer as much as you want from that statement

Pash

earweed wrote: »

@Pash- You set us up and then say not to have fun with it. The mag is probably not available anywhere, it's not on ebay.

It does appear very hard to get hold of that now then. I thought they were still stocking it. If I spot it anywhere Ill let you know.

BradleyHU

RobertKaucher wrote: »

They are actually quite similar and both Java and C# are OO languages.

i was bout to say the same thing. they both are OO langs. i've coded in Java in undergrad, and my Software Eng classes we used C# to code the software for our projects. the structure is the same for the most part.

falcon101

Claymoore wrote: »

That explains the pile of dung that is Starcraft II - their Windows admins wrote it. I would say steaming pile of dung, but that would imply a level of freshness and, after a 10 year wait, there is nothing fresh about that game. Also, based on that job description, Blizzard is not a place where I would want to work. I would guess that they run too lean and their teams are difficult to manage, which could also explain why we waited 10 years for what is essentially the second expansion pack for Starcraft.

The very foundation of human civilization is division of labor. As soon as we stopped living a nomadic, hunting and gathering life, we needed to specialize to prosper. As the population expands, it is possible to further specialize the labor divisions and productivity for the entire population improves. We begin to leverage concepts like economies of practice where people get better at things they do every day. When the population shrinks, it is not always possible to maintain the levels of specialization and productivity for everyone suffers - see Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire or after the Black Death.

The 'population' in this case is the employees of the company. You typically see Jack-of-all-Trade admins at small companies where the population does not support increased specialization. While they may do many tasks, they do not do them all well. When companies lay off people you have a population decrease that lessens specialization by requiring the rest of us to pick up the slack. Now the guy who supported Exchange also has to maintain the company website and both platforms suffer because of it.

There is a difference between 5 years of experience and 1 year of experience 5 times. If you want to be great at something, focus on that and learn all you can about that topic. You should pick up the supporting technologies along the way - enough AD, storage and networking to be able to troubleshoot Exchange for example - but always come back to your area of specialization. Definitely learn some type of scripting language, such as PoSh, Perl or even VBscript to automate as many of your daily tasks as possible. But a Windows admin diving into .Net without the intention of switching careers isn't going to do anyone any good. That is time that could have been spent furthering your knowledge of your core skills.

Really good post!!

BTW, I fit in the "Jack-of-all-Trade admins at small companies where the population does not support increased specialization." type scenario where I do EVERYTHING but not necessarily a specialist at one thing. You made some valid points and I do have a strong feeling towards an Sys/Net admin with programming skills. I just don't see it. Yes they should have light scripting and PowerShell stuff but I see posts here about Java, .NET, C+ etc and I just don't get it.

I presently work but in the job market and I do see job posting which make me wana slap the person who posted it. The companies DO want you to know everything IT and in between. I would like to shake the persons hand who is not only a great Sys/net admin, a programmer, web developer, an IT Manager and a specialist in those technologies.

end rant.

falcon101

Now this is a job I would LOVE to have, (its a 100 mile round trip commute for me but I'll still take it)

Another one from Blizzard:


The information technology (IT) service desk manager is responsible for providing leadership both in the daily operations of the service desk (help desk) functions, as well as provide leadership with key initiatives including desktop management, process improvements, metrics, user provisioning, standards specification, and management. This role leads resources both internally, as well as manages outsourced resources as required.

Responsibilities

* Provide leadership of IT support desk services across Blizzard Entertainment's North American facilities.
* Demonstrate superior customer service as defined through customer satisfaction.
* Meet and exceed service levels.
* Manage internal, outsourced, and offshore resources as required.
* Effectively manage support metrics including timeliness of ticket resolution.
* Act as a liaison to the development teams for projects and support issues.
* Confer with teams on administrative policies and procedures, technical problems, priorities, and methods.
* Provide activity, progress, and status reports to management and keep management posted of any critical issues on a regular basis.
* Provide tactical and strategic guidance to the service desk team to ensure they are informed of any changes which could potentially impact customer support.
* Ensure appropriate tools and processes are utilized to provide exceptional customer service, and maintain high standards focused on quality, accuracy, and efficiency.
* Identify and implement continual improvements to streamline cost and improve service levels.
* Ensure timely patching of operating system; security and application software.
* Effectively deploy and manage enterprise resources.
* Provide research, guidance, and recommendations for user standards.
* Manage IT equipment standards and purchases.
* Provide leadership for key project initiatives including the deployment of planned desktop application upgrades.
* Provide leadership for projects that require support from the service desk and desktop team for application and network projects.
* Ensure licensing requirements are managed.
* Ensure Sarbanes-Oxley compliance of services including user access provisioning and access rights.
* Align resources to work with other IT areas in key deployments of new technologies.
* Coordinate with IT management, assignment of personnel to various projects based on the skills of the person and the skills required by the project.
* Provide leadership through mentoring team members and helping them achieve higher levels of accomplishment.
* Provide educational opportunities to team members.
* Provide a challenging environment and opportunities for advancement.
* Lead by example.
* Encourage continual growth in skills of others.

Requirements

* Bachelor's degree in IT, or related business focus area
* A minimum of 7 years experience in IT industry
* A minimum of 5 years in help/service desk support
* A minimum of 3 years managing a team with experience of managing 15 or more employees
* A minimum of 1 year experience in project management
* Available 24 / 7 / 365
* Skilled in planning, coordinating, and problem solving.
* Excellent interpersonal, and written and verbal communications / presentation skills.
* Exceptional customer service skills
* Strong follow-up skills
* ITIL Foundation certification

Slowhand

Claymoore wrote: »

The 'population' in this case is the employees of the company. You typically see Jack-of-all-Trade admins at small companies where the population does not support increased specialization. While they may do many tasks, they do not do them all well.

I definitely agree with this, the people who try to be experts at everything rarely end up being fully proficient at anything. I'm not claiming that anyone needs to be an expert programmer to take on a job like the one offered by Blizzard, but having some proficiency is what they're looking for. Much like how an experienced Windows admin might get Linux+ certified in order to get a little bit of experience on 'the other side', so that *NIX related interoperability problems won't completely derail him/her.

Claymoore wrote: »

Definitely learn some type of scripting language, such as PoSh, Perl or even VBscript to automate as many of your daily tasks as possible. But a Windows admin diving into .Net without the intention of switching careers isn't going to do anyone any good. That is time that could have been spent furthering your knowledge of your core skills.

I was hoping you could expand a bit on the reason why diving into .NET is a bad idea for Windows admins. While I agree with you that trying to spread oneself too thin is always a recipe for disaster, I fail to see how picking up enough knowledge of .NET programming to help you support (and possibly fix) custom-made .NET applications in your environment is any more of a waste of time than the aforementioned Windows admin picking up a little bit of Linux knowledge to keep from being a constant bother to the *NIX admin(s). Wouldn't straying outside your core competency to learn either skill - neither of which is a small task, and both of which would take up about 6 months to a year to not only learn but also become comfortable with - be a waste of time by that logic?

Great post, you said a lot of things that made me think. (Otherwise I wouldn't have had reason to respond. )

Claymoore

Slowhand wrote: »

I definitely agree with this, the people who try to be experts at everything rarely end up being fully proficient at anything. I'm not claiming that anyone needs to be an expert programmer to take on a job like the one offered by Blizzard, but having some proficiency is what they're looking for. Much like how an experienced Windows admin might get Linux+ certified in order to get a little bit of experience on 'the other side', so that *NIX related interoperability problems won't completely derail him/her.

You have to weigh the time and effort involved in achieving the Linux+ with the benefit to your career goals. If all you want to do is set up an NFS share on a Windows box, then the Linux+ is overkill. If you want to be a consultant specializing in Single Sign-On solutions with AD, then the Linux+ may not be enough.

I'll use some examples from my experience as an Exchange consultant. Exchange 2003 didn't have an Edge Transport role so companies often used a Linux-based appliance or Linux sendmail server as a smart host for edge mail routing. If I want to completely manage the messaging infrastructure, I need to be able to manage and troubleshoot that appliance, which will require some Linux knowledge. I have also used Linux-based load balancer appliances for SSL offload, reverse proxy, and load balancing the CAS/HT servers.

As a consultant, I will probably not have the rights to muck about on those systems so I will rely on their admins just as I have to rely on their network admins to make changes for me. It helps to know enough to be able to speak to the team - whether that be the Linux or networking team - in their own language.

Slowhand wrote: »

I was hoping you could expand a bit on the reason why diving into .NET is a bad idea for Windows admins. While I agree with you that trying to spread oneself too thin is always a recipe for disaster, I fail to see how picking up enough knowledge of .NET programming to help you support (and possibly fix) custom-made .NET applications in your environment is any more of a waste of time than the aforementioned Windows admin picking up a little bit of Linux knowledge to keep from being a constant bother to the *NIX admin(s). Wouldn't straying outside your core competency to learn either skill - neither of which is a small task, and both of which would take up about 6 months to a year to not only learn but also become comfortable with - be a waste of time by that logic?

Great post, you said a lot of things that made me think. (Otherwise I wouldn't have had reason to respond. )

Again, how does learning .Net support your daily tasks or long-term goals? Do you feel you can learn enough in 6 months to be able to troubleshoot and fix a problem that made it through development, testing and QA? What are the political ramifications of your fixing the code?

I can fire up some Sysinternals tools, maybe see where something is failing, and send it back to the developer. I am not touching the code because I don't want to own it. Any time a problem happens as long as that program is in production the developer can say "It worked fine until you tried to fix it". Don't give them that out, make them fix their own code.

As for bothering the *Nix admins or developers, well administering *Nix or developing applications is their f'king job. I will not apologize for making someone do the work for which they are directly responsible and being compensated. I will, however, thank them for their time and effort. You may be surprised how much goodwill a well-written 'Thank you' email will generate, provided you copy their manager. If you learn to work with other teams and leverage their experience, everyone will be more productive.

bertieb

Another great post Claymoore. These threads/posts are why I'm addicted to this site. Sadly I can't rep you again just yet :P

Claymoore wrote:

You may be surprised how much goodwill a well-written 'Thank you' email will generate, provided you copy their manager. If you learn to work with other teams and leverage their experience, everyone will be more productive.

+1 to this. Plus (as a consultant) I've found that you stand more chance of being asked to more work if you integrate with the existing staff well.

phoeneous

I've been preaching it for years, you can't be a good sysadmin/netadmin without knowing at least some programming even if it is just scripting.

Slowhand

Here's another example from the video game industry. This is a company called Playdom which was recently been bought out by Disney as their go-to shop for making Facebook games, iPhone and Android games, etc.

IT Systems Administrator
Information Technology | Mountain View, CA, United States

Looking for an individual who is highly motivated, has great communication skills and is enthusiastic about technology. This person will support and develop a variety of system tools for users. Core responsibility will be internal IT Support and developing and administrating JIRA/Confluence for internal and external use.You'll work with team leads to outline workflows for tracking issues. This person will be the main contact and responsible for keeping systems up and running, organized.


Essential Duties and Responsibilities:

• Support implementation, troubleshooting, and maintenance of internal IT systems and IT system infrastructure and any processes related to these system
• Provide internal support to IT systems including day-to-day operations, monitoring and problem resolution
• Serve as JIRA/Confluence Systems administrator, and be the first point of contact for users
• Work with management, developers, quality engineers, and product managers to gather requirements and define workflow for a new issue-tracking system, then develop issue-tracking system in JIRA
• Help improve and streamline internal processes
• Troubleshoot and resolve issues related to all implementations of JIRA/Confluence
• Write Atlassian JIRA/Confluence plugins to create new functionality and user interfaces customized to company needs

Experience:

• Ability to identify and resolve problems and to gather and analyze information skillfully to develop appropriate solutions
• Solutions-oriented self-starter and team player, ability to work in a fast paced environment
• Driven to deliver quickly and iterate towards the end-goal
• Multi-platform knowledge including Windows, MacOs and Linux required; knowledge of cloud computing strongly preferred
• Strong communication skills (verbal and written)

Again, this job is fairly standard fare for IT, but with the added dynamic of being responsible for maintaining and writing plugins for the JIRA bug/project-tracking software. JIRA can be a fickle beast, but working with Atlassian makes it a little bit easier. Still, you need a reasonable understanding of Java in order to make those plugins useful.

I will add, though, that it would have been nice to see a more detailed description of what systems they're running internally and what it is that this IT admin would have to support. The entry, "Multi-platform knowledge including Windows, MacOs and Linux required; knowledge of cloud computing strongly preferred," sounds to me like it's describing the end-user systems and not the servers/networking equipment.

Forsaken_GA

every admin who stays employed is going to run into some form of coding, whether it's just scripts or actual source code for compiled binaries. There will come a time where you're sick of doing some repetitive task and figure that a script can do it for you, or you'll want certain information, and you'll write a script to parse your data and present information you can actually use.

And even if you never write a single line of code yourself, it's very useful to at least be able to parse through someone elses code when a script is giving you problems to see where the break down is. It may not be your fault, but at 3am in the morning, it can certainly be your problem

Slowhand

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

It may not be your fault, but at 3am in the morning, it can certainly be your problem

I think these words are some of the most important any IT admin should learn. Be it someone else's script, someone else's coded app, or someone else's server, it can quickly become your problem when no one else is around to fix it and you need it working.

Forsaken_GA

Slowhand wrote: »

I think these words are some of the most important any IT admin should learn. Be it someone else's script, someone else's coded app, or someone else's server, it can quickly become your problem when no one else is around to fix it and you need it working.

Yup, who's fault it is can be determined at the post-mortem blamestorming session, and in my experience, the fault will usually lay with some departed employee, so there may not be a subject matter expert to consult with anymore. In that case, the good admin will take it upon themselves to become the new subject matter experts.

Or they'll freshen up their resume after the next outage.

Forsaken_GA

Greg Ferro over at Etherealmind put up a post yesterday that made me think of this thread. It's not directly related to why you should learn some code skills if you're not a programmer, but a rather good read on why it's important to expand your skill set to include different multiple skillsets.

Blessay: Cloud Convergence, Skills and Your Career ? My Etherealmind

dynamik

Forsaken_GA wrote: »

Greg Ferro over at Etherealmind put up a post yesterday that made me think of this thread. It's not directly related to why you should learn some code skills if you're not a programmer, but a rather good read on why it's important to expand your skill set to include different multiple skillsets.

Blessay: Cloud Convergence, Skills and Your Career ? My Etherealmind

He makes some decent points, but I question some of the items, such as the closing bit about how there hasn't been much change or innovation in the last decade.

Also related, I had to tweak the MySQL source to get it to compile on OpenBSD. I might just go with the package next time...