From: Wiggins d'Anconia <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > David Leathers wrote: > <snip> > > After reading some of the post just was wondering if I'm starting to > > learn the right language first. I am studying to be a network > > administrator or a job in that field. Is this the best language for > > me to start on? > > > > That is basically un-answerable :-). Unix, Windows, etc., are you > managing desktops or servers, routers, mainframes, etc?? C is > probably the best language to learn, and probably one of the hardest > to teach yourself, Perl is very commonly used and very good at > handling all kinds of administration tasks on many platforms, so it > certainly won't hurt. It is also relatively easy to pick up to do > non-complex tasks. For unix, conquering shell programming is probably > an administrators best bet, but then that wouldn't be much of a > conquest would it?
I think C is prettymuch useless for normal sysadmins. There already is a Perl module for almost anything and if there is not Win32::API, FFI or something like that can most probably get you there as well. And since it takes ten times longer to do anything in C than in Perl ... As a sysadmin you will end up doing most of the stuff in Perl anyway. If you expect to manage Unixes I would suggest the shell programming (at least so as to understand other peoples' scripts), if you are gonna work in the Windows area you should learn at least a little VB/VBScript (You'll need to be able to read it since a lot of system/application documentation assumes you are using it.) The question is ... do you need to learn the basics of programming first? If so you may want to start with Pascal or Basic. Something that will not give you as much rope to hang yourself as Perl does. IMHO of course. I started with Basic (13), then there was Pascal (16), Prolog and C (18), ML and Concurrent Clean (19), Perl (20). (I left out languages I learned to some small extent but never really used like SmallTalk, Lisp and Simula). Each additional language was easier to learn than the last. Jenda ===== [EMAIL PROTECTED] === http://Jenda.Krynicky.cz ===== When it comes to wine, women and song, wizards are allowed to get drunk and croon as much as they like. -- Terry Pratchett in Sourcery -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
