[dozzie]

You know what is more important for a infrastructure/devops engineer, previously simply called "sysadmin"? Understanding several compilers and interpreters (and actually learning several programming languages). Unix C API (fork(), exec(), file descriptors, pipes, sockets, and others). Understanding how services daemonize and how they log. Learning how packaging systems work, how to build a new package, and how to install it. Learning what can be read/detected about the system and what does this information mean. Learning how does the networking work (address configuration, resolver, routing, firewall, packet inspection). Traditional networking helpers, along with several protocols carried out by hand. NSS and PAM, and how the accounts work. And many, many more basic things.

I've never seen anybody understanding the basics, who would have any trouble picking up anything that was a fad in the last ten years from its documentation directly. On the other hand, I've seen Docker or Ansible fanboys that couldn't unify accounts across dozen servers in a sensible way, despite their "modern automation" tools.

And screencasts are the second most useless way of conveying technical material (the top one being podcasts). You can't skim through the material, you can't search it, you can't copy-paste it, you can't print its fragments, it's inherently hard to navigate.

[markatto]

I share your sentiment that there are way too many copy-paste "devops" people in the industry these days; I always thought the idea was to hire people with both sysadmin and coding skills, yet a perplexingly high proportion of people I interact with these days have neither. I'd never choose to hire somebody who can't describe a tcp handshake, explain what epoll_wait() does or whiteboard a hashtable, but that's the state of our industry (and, probably, why those of us who can are in such high demand...)

Nonetheless, it seems silly to complain about a lack of knowledge and then complain about somebody trying to share knowledge. I've definitely wanted to lock coworkers in a room with a copy of _The_Linux_Programming_Interface_ before, but maybe a video series on similar topics would be better-received.

[brogrammer90]

How does it feel to know these devop types are a decade younger and make the same if not more money than you?

[WestCoastJustin]

> And screencasts are the second most useless way of conveying technical material (the top one being podcasts). You can't skim through the material, you can't search it, you can't copy-paste it, you can't print its fragments, it's inherently hard to navigate.

Transcripts with diagrams and code blocks solves this problem. See https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/47-zero-downtime-deployme... as a good example.

Disclaimer: I'm the author. Also a Docker and Ansible fanboy.

[joe-stanton]

I've learned a huge amount from screencasts such as destroyallsoftware.com, so I think we can agree to disagree on this point. Additionally, I think the success of Codeschool, Code Academy, Pluralsight etc. show that I'm not really in the minority here.

A number of points you mention are possible topics. Although I can't think of a single situation where "understanding several compilers" would have helped me design/maintain/troubleshoot infrastructure I'm responsible for.

But hey, looks like you're not in my target market, and that's ok!

[dozzie]

> [...] I can't think of a single situation where "understanding several compilers" would have helped me design/maintain/troubleshoot infrastructure I'm responsible for.

Oh, sure, you don't need to understand how ELF binaries work, until you try to do anything non-trivial to them (building chroot image anyone?). You also don't need to know how Ruby or Python work with modules, but I'll want to stay away from any your system where you happen to install a random recently developed software, because it will be a mess.

> But hey, looks like you're not in my target market, and that's ok!

Of course I'm not. What you proposed is a list for novice sysadmins, except it doesn't touch the essence of the craft, focusing instead on shiny bells and whistles of limited applicability that will be obsolete five years from now.

[afarrell]

> Learning how packaging systems work

Do you have a good source on this? When I sat down to do this in fall of 2014, I found myself frustrated with the lack of good tutorials.

[nicollecastrog]

From the sounds of it, you're not his target audience.