Programming Language for Systems Administrator

[beliavsky at aol.com]

Ville Vainio wrote:

> If you don't need to edit already existing system scripts, you don't
> really need to know bash scripting. For debugging purposes, it's easy
> to see what commands the script executes to perform a task.
>
> You just need to know about `backticks` and $ENV_VARS, but that's
more
> general Unix knowledge than actual shell scripting.
>
> So IMHO learning bash scripting might be a waste of time, and it
> should be learnt 'as you go' - i.e. if/when you eventually bump into
a
> problem where you need to be able to do bash scripting. There's the
> 'Unix romantic' movement that still thinks shell scripts are a good
> idea, but this is my .02EUR to point out that not everyone agrees
with
> them.

The simplest script is just a set of commands one could run from the
command line. One step above is learning how to pass arguments (for
cmd.exe in Windows, they are just %1, %2, etc.) and set variables. I
think every computer user, not just system administrators, show know
this much about the shell language of his OS, regardless of whether
it's Windows, Unix, or something else. On Windows I often see people
"mousing around" instead of getting things done faster from the command
line.

I actually like the Windows cmd language (it's an acquired taste), but
I have read it is going away in Windows Longhorn (WH). That's an
argument for writing more complicated scripts in Python. WH is supposed
to get a much better shell, called Monad, inspired by the philosophy of
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz :).

Between a low-level shell scripting language and a higher-level
language like Python, and intermediate level language such as Rexx
could be considered. Many IBM people swear by it.