ELI5: Guys, I have a few questions about programming and FreeBSD

Erichans said:
From what I've read so far, I think you're not directly interested in starting to make a career out of programming
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This assumption is correct.

Erichans said:
and your choice isn't influenced/mandated by a particular work environment
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I would say that the closest work environment would be sysadmin before cloud and devops.

Erichans said:
From a sysadmin POV sh(1) and some accompanying sed(1) and awk(1) is always useful to get some basic feel for and skills in.
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Yup, this plus Perl is what I have been using for the past decade, but without a learning routine, learning what I need when I need it.

Erichans said:
Another helpful way of looking at your next (first?) programming endeavour could be to look at a language that you'd be comfortable with and enjoy developing code with; that is kind of a chicken-and-an-egg problem I admit. Also, perhaps you've already got some ideas what (problems) you'd like to program.
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That would be Perl, but I'm looking for a new one for reasons that I stated in the comment #30.

Erichans said:
If you've already got some kind of problem/solution in mind you'd be interested in programming then you could use that as a guide to find a suitable (first) programming language for. I'd focus on a programming language/environment in combination with no or a very light IDE; after some practice, you'd have a much bigger chance of having fun in using it.

Have a look at the (main) website (or join a forum) of a particular programming language and find out what the helpful books (websites?) are for beginners to learn that particular programming language. Apart from that, try to find what the helpful books are for beginning programmers (books that happen to be in that particular language); note the difference between this sentence and the previous one.
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I did that with Perl.

Erichans said:
Given the possibility to apply to a very broad type of programming problems from sysadmin stuff to full-fledged applications, I'd have a look at Python.
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I played with Python in college, didn't like it.

Erichans said:
* Perhaps after a reasonable amount of time and experience with your first programming language you could broaden your horizon with something like Seven Languages in Seven Weeks if you feel like it.
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Great resource, thank you.
 
astyle said:
'Cloud', 'Devops'... 'Netflix'. On closer inspection, that's just a computer available over IPv4, running FreeBSD. 😏
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I meant in the sense that everything was made locally in the companies and they had a team in the basement taking care of the servers. In opposition to everything being cloud based now.
Ok, I agree with you, it was a poor oversimplification from my part, I apologize, English isn't my native language.
 
BobSlacker said:
I meant in the sense that everything was made locally in the companies and they had a team in the basement taking care of the servers. In opposition to everything being cloud based now.
Ok, I agree with you, it was a poor oversimplification from my part, I apologize, English isn't my native language.
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Sorry, didn't mean to come across as anal retentive... I'm sometimes blunt in my assessment of the situation, and I end up acting like a compiler that compiles a long-ass line of Java into a simple PUSH assembler command that puts bits on the bus... 😅
 
One cannot draw a sharp line between what's programming and what's system's administration.
Independent from how to define those you always have overlappings.
Even when a sysadmin does not neccessarily has to actual programm things,
it's good if he has some skill in this field.

When you learned C and got into shells, you'll see:
C is Unix, and Unix is C.

From my experience it'll teach one a lot to have at least made some basic programming in assembly,
especially when get into C.

However:

I like to drop some links,
which for some may be interesting:

learn X in Y minutes
You will not get deep or even good at anything,
but it's good to get a first impression.

programming Mofu
He has some interesting points of view not everybody may share,
but take a peek at the free books list.

The pragmatic Programmer
This book is in fact more about project management in general,
more teaching organization, philosophys, and attitudes about programming.
 
Although "cloud" indeed technically just means "it's running on someone else's computer(s) now", it does change a lot about the operations ppl's job. Instead of maintaining and operating hardware and operating systems (and, on top of that, the application software needed), they now maintain all sorts of offered services, so must understand the vendors' models, APIs, etc, this might include some "infrastructure as code" solutions.

So, just mentioning "cloud" in your profile as an "admin" certainly carries some meaning.
 
BobSlacker said:
I played with Python in college, didn't like it.
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This short sentence calls for questions:

What kind of college was that?
How many years have passed since? (Python improved a lot)
What did you study at college and was Python on the curriculum? (you mentioned "played" not "learned/studied")
For what reason(s) didn't you like it?
 
Well, not liking python certainly isn't "failed education". And my personal top reason for not liking it remains the same no matter how you define the context, I just never take this "argumentation over XYZ" too seriously ;)
 
A part of system administration is simply editing the textual configuration files of services in /etc & /usr/local/etc with vi.
For this you must know the syntax & meaning of the configuration files.
You can automate some with ansible(python), but when you only need to configure one PC you are better of with vi.
I don' like perl because it's easy to write unreadable code in perl... But that's just a personal opinion comparable to which color is the most beautifull.
System programming can be done in many higher level languages. Eg the lesser known "functional" ocaml,
 
Folks, please! Writing python means a snake while Python is the name of a programming language.

Throwing popcorn now from behind. :)
 
getopt said:
In Python I prefer using syntactic whitespace, while semantic whitespace still can be useful.
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This is more or less a troll-move (can't complain about that in response to my own troll-move of course 🤡), since "semantics" requires context. Whitespace being a syntactical element in Python means it also carries semantics in terms of the language itself – as opposed to only in terms of human communication of intent as is the case in most languages.

But I see you understood my point very well 😈
 
As the counter of postings increased substantially it’s worth taking a break looking at the title the OP composed.

ELI5: Guys, I have a few questions about programming and FreeBSD
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As I’m not so sure if ELI5 is used here in a parenting context, there is a Python module ELI5 that has TextExplainer.

https://eli5.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorials/black-box-text-classifiers.html#textexplainer

It could be used to predict, which programming language the OP probably will choose having read this thread here.

In the documentation you also can read about “reasonable classifiers” and “sanity checks” and “distorted text”. Further more you might get an idea why scoring matters when it comes to trust explanations.

A use-case could be running this on our postings before hitting the “reply” button.
 
getopt said:
What kind of college was that?
How many years have passed since? (Python improved a lot)
What did you study at college and was Python on the curriculum? (you mentioned "played" not "learned/studied")
For what reason(s) didn't you like it?
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1- Cyber-security
2- Around 5 years
3- A bunch of stuff (don't want to get out of scope here, and I don't like to talk about hackeragens)
4- Mostly because it didn't pleases my ego (Stirner intensifies), and if this is not enough for you, because I hated how strict the format is and the importance of white space, fuck that noise. That's also why I choose Perl way before college.

PS.: I don't want to discuss Python, please keep you snake in your pants.
 
Jose said:
Python? I can hate on that language using just three letters G-I-L.
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That's merely a lightning rod. Even if they solved that Python would still be too slow for purpose ;)

Though I might also add three letters of my own P-I-P.

(I feel that I came a little late. Hopefully there is still 🍿)
 
BobSlacker Thank you for this useful thread and with your permission, let me ask this question.
Guys, I'd really like to know your opinion about Ruby. This is one of my favorite programming languages. Of course, I only used it with Rails. Apparently, many of you have a negative opinion about Python, what about Ruby?
 
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