9 ms·

Furthermore, As someone who has been hiring every skilled developer I can come across for three years, I have found that good linux skills are one of the best m

by dkhenry 14y ago

Furthermore, As someone who has been hiring every skilled developer I can come across for three years, I have found that good linux skills are one of the best markers of good development skills. There is something about people who aren't afraid to , and even enjoy , using linux that corresponds with an aptitude with programming, this is especially true of back end developers.

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago
Familiarity with Linux means people know the basics of UNIX, which is essential if you're doing anything on the web these days.
- strangetimes 14y ago
  Don't tell .NET developers that.
dsirijus 14y ago
Also, though I have no sources on this other than personal experience, linux skills are frequently indicator of heavy prorastinator.
- Craiggybear 14y ago
  > "Also, though I have no sources on this other than personal experience, linux skills are frequently indicator of heavy prorastinator." What on Earth are you talking about?
- davidmr 14y ago
  That's a curious association I've never made. Can you say a bit more about that?
  - praptak 14y ago
    What draws people to Linux is the possibility of tinkering. It's not like tinkerers are always procrastinators but they prefer tasks that engage their "tinkerer sense": trying out a new API or maybe doing something unusual with an old one. Doing something mundane with a known API is something they will avoid. Such tasks are probably in the majority of those found even in the most exciting jobs. This is what I believe to be the cause of the association. Source: generalizing my own experience to the whole population of Earth. Btw, I gotta get back to work too.
  - dsirijus 14y ago
    Well, where there's much to play with, you end up playing much. I frequently find myself playing in my .vimrc, .screenrc, .bashrc and other confs to not much obvious productive output. Changing window managers, console terminals and anything basically, all in excuse of not working on job at hand. On the upper hand, beats playing solitaire.
- unimpressive 14y ago
  Realizes he's had a Clojure REPL open for days untouched. I have no idea what you're talking about. EDIT: Six minutes later sees this post and realizes he STILL hasn't gotten back to what he was working on.
- slurgfest 14y ago
  Procrastination means absolutely nothing if there is good output. If you are not on the floor of some factory sweatshop, it isn't necessary to have continuous even output. Procrastination can be managed. One can procrastinate on one task by carrying out another. If I do not work for an hour and then make the perfect change, that's better than floundering for six hours.
  - dsirijus 14y ago
    Usually, when I do feel like not working on what I need to be working atm, I work on something else I DO feel like working on. Even when it costs me a deadline miss, I end up with something tangible in the end. That's my best yet strategy against procrastination.
    - wpietri 14y ago
      You are not alone. Consider the art of structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
    - nicholassmith 14y ago
      I always find the work you do that you are interested in usually has implications for the work you don't want to do, positive implications usually.
- polynomial 14y ago
  That's not procrastination, that's push-back. ;-)
- eli_gottlieb 14y ago
  The three virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris. Thanks to Larry Wall.
ntkachov 14y ago
While this may be true it is important to note that the corollary is not necessarily true. That is to say, not having good linux skills doesn't make you bad developer. I've found plenty of people who don't know linux very well and are fantastic developers. Personally, I'm having trouble living without grep (work is easier on a windows machine).
- sciurus 14y ago
  I'm sure you know, but there are many ways to get GNU grep or similar programs running on Windows. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-tool-for-windows http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-...
  - dredmorbius 14y ago
    Sure, there are ways to get various Linux-like tools on Windows, or Mac. But inevitably -- and I've been using Windows offerings since the mid 1990s and Mac for the past 6-7 years -- these are nowhere near as complete as what you'll find in native Linux, they're missing key bits, polish and bugs are less than optimal, host integration isn't what it is in Linux, host features lack key Linux bits (especially /proc and /sys, and all that they enable), and if you want full coverage, you'll almost always end up with several different toolsets none of which offer quite what I'm looking for. And you're missing soup-to-nuts, all-encompassing, sane, bug-reporting-integrated package management. On other systems, I manage bits of my Linux-like environment through better or worse (Cygwin -- don't get me started -- but look at apt-cygwin) package management. But most of my OS is outside of that. Inside Debian, I might manage a very small handful of non-packaged software items, mostly browser plugins. Oh, and lately Ruby gems, which are their own brand of hell, but whatever. I first switched to Linux when I realized that I was spending more and more of my time trying to make Windows NT look like what I got out of the box with a $30 Linux distro CD (bundled with a book). Other than a few distro hops (last to Debian, in the late 1990s, though I continue to evaluate / work with others), I've never looked back.
- AkThhhpppt 14y ago
  What's preventing you running a VM to let you use it (and all the other helpful bits)?
wyclif 14y ago
What's missing in this thread is a description of what kinds of Linux jobs are going unfilled. I'm genuinely curious to know what the landscape looks like.
- freehunter 14y ago
  When I was hired for my job in information security, Linux skills weren't required or even spoken about. After I started, I automated some of my work with shell scripts and wrote other shell scripts to clean up my data for me. Now any new employee that comes in will see "Linux shell scripting recommended" on the application. "Linux jobs" might be rare, but jobs where Linux skill comes in handy are abundant.
- jacobquick 14y ago
  Senior linux system administrators are in very short supply. Companies have given up training people for that kind of work, schools don't teach it, and most of my sysadmin friends migrated to management or dev over the past few years. I've been looking around for a new gig in San Francisco (not south bay) the past month and sometimes it feels like I'm the only candidate and there's all these companies that can't find people. It's nice feeling wanted but I won't do the work of five guys by myself and be the only one on call for years at a stretch, something will have to change soon. I wish Google would adopt that Lee Iacocca philosophy of training people specifically to spread their way of doing things across the industry, at least there'd be competent mid-levels around then, but they just churn those people on 1 year contracts like everyone else.
Jabbles 14y ago
Do you mean bash/shell skills, familiarity with unix tools like grep? Or that deep understanding of an operating system is useful knowledge for a programmer?
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  It sounds like he is talking about the former.
1337p337 14y ago
Of course. If you love programming, an OS whose primary interface is a programmable shell is going to be very appealing. On top of that, the large number of small programming languages that come with typical installs of the OS (awk, sed, dc, bc, sh) make Linux a very comfortable place for programmers.

by dkhenry 14y ago

TazeTSchnitzel 14y ago

Familiarity with Linux means people know the basics of UNIX, which is essential if you're doing anything on the web these days.

strangetimes 14y ago
Don't tell .NET developers that.

dsirijus 14y ago

Also, though I have no sources on this other than personal experience, linux skills are frequently indicator of heavy prorastinator.

Craiggybear 14y ago
> "Also, though I have no sources on this other than personal experience, linux skills are frequently indicator of heavy prorastinator." What on Earth are you talking about?
davidmr 14y ago
That's a curious association I've never made. Can you say a bit more about that?
- praptak 14y ago
  What draws people to Linux is the possibility of tinkering. It's not like tinkerers are always procrastinators but they prefer tasks that engage their "tinkerer sense": trying out a new API or maybe doing something unusual with an old one. Doing something mundane with a known API is something they will avoid. Such tasks are probably in the majority of those found even in the most exciting jobs. This is what I believe to be the cause of the association. Source: generalizing my own experience to the whole population of Earth. Btw, I gotta get back to work too.
- dsirijus 14y ago
  Well, where there's much to play with, you end up playing much. I frequently find myself playing in my .vimrc, .screenrc, .bashrc and other confs to not much obvious productive output. Changing window managers, console terminals and anything basically, all in excuse of not working on job at hand. On the upper hand, beats playing solitaire.
unimpressive 14y ago
Realizes he's had a Clojure REPL open for days untouched. I have no idea what you're talking about. EDIT: Six minutes later sees this post and realizes he STILL hasn't gotten back to what he was working on.
slurgfest 14y ago
Procrastination means absolutely nothing if there is good output. If you are not on the floor of some factory sweatshop, it isn't necessary to have continuous even output. Procrastination can be managed. One can procrastinate on one task by carrying out another. If I do not work for an hour and then make the perfect change, that's better than floundering for six hours.
- dsirijus 14y ago
  Usually, when I do feel like not working on what I need to be working atm, I work on something else I DO feel like working on. Even when it costs me a deadline miss, I end up with something tangible in the end. That's my best yet strategy against procrastination.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    You are not alone. Consider the art of structured procrastination: http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/ http://www.structuredprocrastination.com/
  - nicholassmith 14y ago
    I always find the work you do that you are interested in usually has implications for the work you don't want to do, positive implications usually.
polynomial 14y ago
That's not procrastination, that's push-back. ;-)
eli_gottlieb 14y ago
The three virtues of a programmer are laziness, impatience, and hubris. Thanks to Larry Wall.

ntkachov 14y ago

While this may be true it is important to note that the corollary is not necessarily true. That is to say, not having good linux skills doesn't make you bad developer. I've found plenty of people who don't know linux very well and are fantastic developers. Personally, I'm having trouble living without grep (work is easier on a windows machine).

sciurus 14y ago
I'm sure you know, but there are many ways to get GNU grep or similar programs running on Windows. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-tool-for-windows http://stackoverflow.com/questions/87350/what-are-good-grep-...
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  Sure, there are ways to get various Linux-like tools on Windows, or Mac. But inevitably -- and I've been using Windows offerings since the mid 1990s and Mac for the past 6-7 years -- these are nowhere near as complete as what you'll find in native Linux, they're missing key bits, polish and bugs are less than optimal, host integration isn't what it is in Linux, host features lack key Linux bits (especially /proc and /sys, and all that they enable), and if you want full coverage, you'll almost always end up with several different toolsets none of which offer quite what I'm looking for. And you're missing soup-to-nuts, all-encompassing, sane, bug-reporting-integrated package management. On other systems, I manage bits of my Linux-like environment through better or worse (Cygwin -- don't get me started -- but look at apt-cygwin) package management. But most of my OS is outside of that. Inside Debian, I might manage a very small handful of non-packaged software items, mostly browser plugins. Oh, and lately Ruby gems, which are their own brand of hell, but whatever. I first switched to Linux when I realized that I was spending more and more of my time trying to make Windows NT look like what I got out of the box with a $30 Linux distro CD (bundled with a book). Other than a few distro hops (last to Debian, in the late 1990s, though I continue to evaluate / work with others), I've never looked back.
AkThhhpppt 14y ago
What's preventing you running a VM to let you use it (and all the other helpful bits)?

wyclif 14y ago

What's missing in this thread is a description of what kinds of Linux jobs are going unfilled. I'm genuinely curious to know what the landscape looks like.

freehunter 14y ago
When I was hired for my job in information security, Linux skills weren't required or even spoken about. After I started, I automated some of my work with shell scripts and wrote other shell scripts to clean up my data for me. Now any new employee that comes in will see "Linux shell scripting recommended" on the application. "Linux jobs" might be rare, but jobs where Linux skill comes in handy are abundant.
jacobquick 14y ago
Senior linux system administrators are in very short supply. Companies have given up training people for that kind of work, schools don't teach it, and most of my sysadmin friends migrated to management or dev over the past few years. I've been looking around for a new gig in San Francisco (not south bay) the past month and sometimes it feels like I'm the only candidate and there's all these companies that can't find people. It's nice feeling wanted but I won't do the work of five guys by myself and be the only one on call for years at a stretch, something will have to change soon. I wish Google would adopt that Lee Iacocca philosophy of training people specifically to spread their way of doing things across the industry, at least there'd be competent mid-levels around then, but they just churn those people on 1 year contracts like everyone else.

Jabbles 14y ago

Do you mean bash/shell skills, familiarity with unix tools like grep? Or that deep understanding of an operating system is useful knowledge for a programmer?

sliverstorm 14y ago
It sounds like he is talking about the former.

1337p337 14y ago

Of course. If you love programming, an OS whose primary interface is a programmable shell is going to be very appealing. On top of that, the large number of small programming languages that come with typical installs of the OS (awk, sed, dc, bc, sh) make Linux a very comfortable place for programmers.