[bowlofpetunias]

The sysadmin who can not personally automate his job through programming is not a competent sysadmin.

In between putting out fires and occasionally setting up new systems, this is what sysadmins have been doing long before the word "devops" came into being. Anything you had to do twice, write a script for it.

At least that's what I remember from my sysadmin days: automate the shit out of everything so we could spend more time on Usenet, IRC and reading BOFH stories. This of course to counterbalance having to be on call to fix issues at 2am on a Saturday.