>To clarify, an SRE as Google thinks of it[0] is a deeply skilled programmer (e.g. C/C++ data structures algorithms knowledge) ... and the custom software they

>To clarify, an SRE as Google thinks of it[0] is a deeply skilled programmer (e.g. C/C++ data structures algorithms knowledge) ... and the custom software they code helps keep the website running. In contrast, a classical "sysadmin" as that term was used in the 80s/90s job roles was usually not a hard-core C++ programmer. I made a previous comment about the difference that was motivated by COTS vs internal custom software stack.[1] Quite the opposite actually.In the 80s/90s many of the sysadmins were skilled C/C++/Perl programmers.