My first experience with the korn shell was 20 years ago while trying to prove myself worthy of root on the Solaris boxes that hosted the LDAP servers (iPlanet,

My first experience with the korn shell was 20 years ago while trying to prove myself worthy of root on the Solaris boxes that hosted the LDAP servers (iPlanet, of course) I was responsible for. I'd done a lot of Windows shell scripting before that, and had installed Red Hat Linux to a beat up Packard Bell in 1995, but was floored by the seemingly limitless capabilities of Unix userland utilities under the control of ksh. At first I made due with the man pages, but soon started studying Aeleen Frisch's classic Essential System Administration, and finally got hold of the O'Reilly animal book for Korn. I eventually moved on to bash after helping convince my company to get on RHEL, but those formative experiences with ksh will stay with me forever. Tech is my second career, and has only really paid off in the last 10, so I'm among those over 60 guys who will probably stick around past full retirement age (here in the US for those in my age cohort that's 67).