Which Language to Learn?

3 points by alienfilesystem 5 years ago | 3 comments

Question, please. I have an interest in learning a new language (or two). I've been in IT for 20 years as a sysadmin. I work with Linux, Windows, and Mac platforms daily. I'm fluent in PowerShell and Bash, but I'm bored. I've automated everything I can at work with PS, but I don't really like the language and it's tied to MS, which is not my preferred platform. I want to take it to the next level. I want whatever I learn to be portable, as in works across platforms. I don't care if it's compiled or JIT. I want to also be able to work on Raspberry Pis, which is a big hobby for me, but at the same time to be real-world usable. Python? Go? Rust? Another? Sadly, with the cloud the way it is, everyone seems to be switching over to O365 or Google Cloud, not leaving a ton of options for writing code. My current employer allows me to automate to a point, but we are moving more and more to the cloud, which is disappointing to some degree. Thoughts, opinions? I'd like to move away from the MS ecosystem at some point.

majkinetor 5 years ago |

Use python, eventually go.

Python is use heavily by sys admins on Linux. Its also the most used language ever. Its not very fast tho.

Go is simple language and very fast when you need non-dynamic critical stuff.

Other thing are overkill. You might want to take a look on AutohotKey for Windows UI automation.

> I've automated everything I can at work with PS, but I don't really like the language and it's tied to MS, which is not my preferred platform.

This is strange. Not tied to MS but you are OK with tying with Google ?

Automated everything ? You seem to lack imagination, not languages.

> I'd like to move away from the MS ecosystem at some point.

This is probably the worst time in history to do so.

alienfilesystem 5 years ago | |

Thank you for your comments. I'm not sure how to take the "lack imagination" bit, but I'll accept it.

I've automated what I'm allowed to automate, which is all user, group, file sharing, Exchange Online/O365 stuff, as well as backups, etc.

I don't like Google any more than MS, to be honest. Sadly, it seems that wherever I work, it's either O365 or Google Cloud offerings.

Why do you think moving away from MS at this time is bad? I'm curious.

Sadly, there are not a heap of good IT jobs where I live, so I'm limited in what I can do and where I can work, hence my desire to learn something like Python where I can branch out and maybe take on consulting jobs. I'm also hearing that things like Docker, Kubernetes, etc. are starting to wear thin with serverless objects being the new thing.

I appreciate your comments.

majkinetor 5 years ago | | |

> I'm not sure how to take the "lack imagination" bit, but I'll accept it.

No pun intended. I automated stuff in PowerShell more then decade almost every day, and there is no calming down visible. You could:

- Automate your dev/main Windows machine - control panel, installed apps, etc.

- Automate web stuff (check here for awesome sample [1])

- Create reports of various kinds

- Automate databases on various aspects - backups, seeders, metrics

- Whatever really... every day something else

> Why do you think moving away from MS at this time is bad? I'm curious.

Because MS is the best company today since it opened - bunch of x-platform tools - .NET, PowerShell, Secret management, VSCode, Terminal, WSL ... clearly light years away from MS during 90's or first 2 decade of 20's.

BTW, forgot C#. With .NET 5 this is probably one of the best programming languages and ecosystems around.

> I'm also hearing that things like Docker, Kubernetes, etc. are starting to wear thin with serverless objects being the new thing.

Hype or overkill for 99.9% of companies. Literary almost 0 companies need k8s. The complexity involved is not worth it on premise. Docker is more useful, but also requires a lot of involvement. I had big gov projects in all, and didn't see any benefit compared to projects not using them, contrary, yet another realm you need to handle.

As for serverless, I don't know what to make of it ATM.

[1]: https://gist.github.com/choco-bot/a14b1e5bfaf70839b338eb1ab7...