I was "lucky" to get into system programming on the cusp of Go introduction. I was a refugee from ActionScript world, and was looking for something else to do

I was "lucky" to get into system programming on the cusp of Go introduction. I was a refugee from ActionScript world, and was looking for something else to do with my rudimentary programming skills, mostly looking for Python jobs, especially outside Web because going from ActionScript to JavaScript was way too depressing. So, I applied to a job posting that was looking for "Python programmers who want to learn a different language" (I think, at first at least, Go advertised itself as "almost like Python"). And then I've got a job in the automation department of the company, and from there it was more predictable and sure way forward. After a while I also had to interview people for positions in system. Obviously, I'd be overcome with joy if I ever had a candidate who knew what our product was and was contributing to the open-source parts of it... but nothing like this had ever happened. In most cases, people who came to interviews for system jobs weren't themselves system programmers. So, my task was to look for the best match among candidates who didn't generally match at all. It's ironic how much a typical programmer is completely unaware of how their computers function -- so, I was generally fishing for the bits of general knowledge about computers, and if a candidate could master a plausible explanation of how a particular computer component or a process could work, that was already a huge plus. Now, how can you possibly acquire this knowledge? -- Really, I cannot think of a better way than through contributing to an open-source project, if you aren't already hired by a company that employs you as a system programmer... College doesn't teach anything relevant. Even online boot camps rarely have anything relevant. There are some books, but, mostly woefully outdated and they don't generalize well. The knowledge mostly comes from first-hand experience and following various mailing lists, bug truckers and every so often a conference.