|
|
|
|
|
|
by ghshephard
4766 days ago
|
|
|
On the flip side - I would say, 20+ years into a reasonably successful career in IT/Network Engineering, that one of the best uses of my time in the last couple decades was spending hundreds of hours grokking awk. I've had my share of travelling, socializing, and startups - but I certainly don't, for a second, regret my days and late weekend nights staring into the face of awk. I don't know if this is a "when you have a hammer, everything appears to be a nail" - but I continually am shocked at how few of my six-figure salary colleagues in the IT industry (networking, unix, systems integration) are incapable of slicing and dicing a large text file and reporting on it. Activities that take them the better part of day in Excel, can sometimes be done in a few minutes with a fast awk script. Knowing awk (and all the regex associated joy) has brought me (personally) great pleasure, and I'll die a happy man knowing the time I put into it was well spent. We each have to find joy in life where we can. |
|
|