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Granted, I'm only on the fifth chapter currently, but this is the first IT-oriented book that I've genuinely had a hard time putting down. It's so exciting to b

Granted, I'm only on the fifth chapter currently, but this is the first IT-oriented book that I've genuinely had a hard time putting down. It's so exciting to be able to see so many components of such a successful software (and hardware) organization, and as they mention, to see the reasoning behind the decisions rather than just a dump of "here's what we decided."

dijit 11y ago
I am also enjoying the book currently, I really do like it although it's driven home the fact that I cannot get by (as a systems engineer) without low level programming knowledge and experience. it's a strange feeling seeing the end of the line for your skills that took a decade of slow grinding to acquire.
- cthalupa 11y ago
  I'm not sure I agree that you need low level programming knowledge and experience. The industry is huge, and there's needs for a lot of talent with a variety of skills. If anything, I would argue that the need for the low level languages is disappearing for the general case. As "The Cloud" gets bigger and bigger, and the low level things are handled more and more by a service providers, and they abstract more and more of the day to day, it makes it easier for you to focus on higher level problems. I do think that the days of being purely ops and needing nothing but shell scripting are going away though. You gotta pick up some python or similar at this point.
  - dijit 11y ago
    I did mean python when I said scripting, but I don't know all it's symantics and internals. this is mostly due to a lack of experience, I guess it's time to really sit down and try to craft some larger projects.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > I do think that the days of being purely ops and needing nothing but shell scripting are going away though. You gotta pick up some python or similar at this point. Maybe 5-10 years down the line, but not this year or next.
- AlexB138 11y ago
  I was feeling the exact same way about a year ago. The thing is, once you pick up a programming language, all of your other hard earned Ops skills are still very relevant and will become much more valuable. Without learning some programming you will go the way of the dinosaur, but by learning a bit you can become significantly more effective than you were before.
- andrewstuart2 11y ago
  I don't necessarily think we're at the end of the line for any skills, just perhaps at the beginning of the line (only time will tell) for a new type of split. Either way, existing knowledge seems not to be EOL, but rather complements skills that were traditionally kept separate. Additionally, it always takes plenty of time for legacy systems and processes to become forgotten, so even for those who can't or simply don't want to adapt, I feel like there's plenty of work still out there at places where change must occur more slowly, or where long-term investments have been made.
bcook 11y ago
Similarly, I am incredibly happy to see the interesting blog posts by CloudFlare, Netflix, Mozilla, etc. Share knowledge!
sciurus 11y ago
IMHO there is also a look of good material in Part II of http://the-cloud-book.com/ http://the-cloud-book.com/
- packetslave 11y ago
  Not coincidentally co-written by a former Google SRE
- taude 11y ago
  This book is great. I highly recommend to anyone architecting modern, cloud-based applications. At the very least it introduces a lot of concepts that many different open source projects implement. It'll give you the "why", when you're looking at the "how".

dijit 11y ago

I am also enjoying the book currently, I really do like it although it's driven home the fact that I cannot get by (as a systems engineer) without low level programming knowledge and experience. it's a strange feeling seeing the end of the line for your skills that took a decade of slow grinding to acquire.

cthalupa 11y ago
I'm not sure I agree that you need low level programming knowledge and experience. The industry is huge, and there's needs for a lot of talent with a variety of skills. If anything, I would argue that the need for the low level languages is disappearing for the general case. As "The Cloud" gets bigger and bigger, and the low level things are handled more and more by a service providers, and they abstract more and more of the day to day, it makes it easier for you to focus on higher level problems. I do think that the days of being purely ops and needing nothing but shell scripting are going away though. You gotta pick up some python or similar at this point.
- dijit 11y ago
  I did mean python when I said scripting, but I don't know all it's symantics and internals. this is mostly due to a lack of experience, I guess it's time to really sit down and try to craft some larger projects.
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  > I do think that the days of being purely ops and needing nothing but shell scripting are going away though. You gotta pick up some python or similar at this point. Maybe 5-10 years down the line, but not this year or next.
AlexB138 11y ago
I was feeling the exact same way about a year ago. The thing is, once you pick up a programming language, all of your other hard earned Ops skills are still very relevant and will become much more valuable. Without learning some programming you will go the way of the dinosaur, but by learning a bit you can become significantly more effective than you were before.
andrewstuart2 11y ago
I don't necessarily think we're at the end of the line for any skills, just perhaps at the beginning of the line (only time will tell) for a new type of split. Either way, existing knowledge seems not to be EOL, but rather complements skills that were traditionally kept separate. Additionally, it always takes plenty of time for legacy systems and processes to become forgotten, so even for those who can't or simply don't want to adapt, I feel like there's plenty of work still out there at places where change must occur more slowly, or where long-term investments have been made.

bcook 11y ago

Similarly, I am incredibly happy to see the interesting blog posts by CloudFlare, Netflix, Mozilla, etc. Share knowledge!

sciurus 11y ago

IMHO there is also a look of good material in Part II of http://the-cloud-book.com/ http://the-cloud-book.com/

packetslave 11y ago
Not coincidentally co-written by a former Google SRE
taude 11y ago
This book is great. I highly recommend to anyone architecting modern, cloud-based applications. At the very least it introduces a lot of concepts that many different open source projects implement. It'll give you the "why", when you're looking at the "how".