

System Admin Programing Language - johnrdavisjr

Hello all:
I have been debating with myself and doing research as to which programing language would be necessary for a Sys Admin of CentOS/RHEL. I have attempted to learn C, but have not really found any situation that it would be needed, unless I am creating programs for Linux. I was debating between python, perl, or ruby. What is the opinion of everyone and if you have another language that you recommend please let me know.<p>JR
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spooneybarger
Perl, Python & Ruby should all be equal to the task. There isn't really much
of a hole in any of them for standard systems administration tasks. I would
spend a couple days with each and find whichever feels most comfortable to
you. Give what is involved for most systems administration work, there isn't a
whole lot to differentiate them. I have found issues with python on various
linux distributions where I had to do extra work to get a later version of
python to work while not breaking the existing install which is used in
various admin scripts provided with the OS. That is a relatively minor pain
but one you should be aware of. Don't go willy nilly upgrading your python
install on a linux box w/o being aware of what might break.

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silas
CentOS, Fedora and RHEL use Python for most of the system tools and as such
integrating or contribute to those projects will be easier if you know Python.

That said the recent/popular systems automation and conifguration tools
(Puppet, Chef, etc..) are predominantly in Ruby, so that is a good choice as
well.

I prefer Python, but as spooneybarger said, if you end up using the systems
version of the interpreter with CentOS/RHEL you're going to need to learn the
differences between versions. Luckly EL 6 is coming out soon and you'll get a
fairly up-to-date version.

