what to learn

[Paul Mooring]

I think there's a bit of a misconception for how the industry works that leads to questions like this.  Web design is really more of it's own thing centered around graphic design and css, although programs *have* to know html these days.  Outside that it sounds like you are getting ahead of yourself in terms of specialization, everyone doing non-entry level IT work needs to know a bit of programming (you can call it scripting if you like) and any non-entry level programmer needs to know a bit the systems they right code for (sys-admin 101).

If what you're worried about is building up the knowledge needed for a career, in my opinion the right approach is "what don't I know?"  If you have never written any code before don't worry about learning web development, go learn some basic scripting simple perl/ruby/python scripts and the basics of writing code in general.  If you're comfortable with that but you don't know how your OS works, go set up a linux server or compile a kernel or whatever else interests you.  If you already know all that dive into something deeper, pick up a new programming language or run through linux from scratch.

One more thought, I'm of the opinion you can't "learn security"  Securing a system is really more of a by-product of intrinsically understanding that system and how it can be exploited.  That implies that if you aren't already very competent writing code and understanding system internals you can't be a useful security person until you are.


Paul Mooring
Operations Engineer
www.opscode.com

________________________________
From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org <plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org> on behalf of Michael Havens <bmike1 at gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, August 23, 2013 11:31 AM
To: PLUG
Subject: what to learn

you know, I've asked the question about what to learn multiple times. I think I've been asking the wrong question. The new incarnation of my question is what do you think I should learn. Programming is one option and web design is another. Is there another option i'm not thinking  of? I guess security is a third. Any others? Things to consider when answering that question would be what is needed? What is the potential? What isn't being addressed.... things like that.

I have more questions but I guess we should get that question out of the way first.
:-)~MIKE~(-:
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