[aclug-L] Re: CS Degrees (Was: Re: Cool new fan site....hehe)

[Jonathan Hall <jonhall@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> > Being knoweldgable in the area of computers or Unix specifically is not
> > "magic."  You cannot become proficient at school.  You become proficient at
> > home, or on the job.
> 
> I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's very difficult to
> learn Unix administration by yourself ("at home").  There is so much
> word-of-mouth knowledge that you can never learn in books... you have to
> have a strong link to an experienced base of users.  My last job I took
> over an admin position from someone that was entirely self-taught on the
> job... he read books and in the end knew a lot of technical details.  But
> he did a lot of stupid things because he never had anybody to reveal to
> him the traditions of "how things are done in Unix" and you don't get
> those from a manual.  Especially going from administering a one-user
> machine to administering production servers with real users.

I would agree that a 'book junkie' is not going to make a good Unix admin if
that's where he gets all his knowledge.  I am (primarily) a self-taught Unix
user (although it might be argued that I'm a bad one :-).  Most of my Unix
knowledge has not been gathered from books, though.  Much of it has been by
reading--reading man pages, HOWTOs, and other forms of online documentation. 
I would say that these forms of online documentation are different from
books, in that they DO often teach the "how things are done in Unix"--b/c
they're almost always written by real Unix admins/users/programmers :-)

Even that, though, is not enough to be a "good" Unix admin.  I've also spent
time with other Unix users (ACLUG, my work at SouthWind, etc... as well as
other online sources--Usenet, IRC, etc)


--
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capita in the U.S. with one electoral vote for every 605,803 people.
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