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- From: tnagy@ibm.net
- Newsgroups: alt.computer.consultants,comp.edu,comp.lang.basic.misc,comp.lang.c++,comp.lang.misc,comp.lang.pascal.borland,comp.lang.pascal.delphi.misc,comp.misc,comp.os.msdos.programmer,comp.os.os2.programmer.misc,comp.programming
- Subject: Re: Info on being a Systems Programmer/Analyst?
- Date: 22 Mar 1996 15:49:35 GMT
- Message-ID: <4iui6f$2vt2@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net>
- References: <4itd85$28s0@news-s01.ny.us.ibm.net> <Doo5o5.CB4@presby.edu>
- Reply-To: tnagy@ibm.net
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- In <Doo5o5.CB4@presby.edu>, jtbell@presby.edu (Jon Bell) writes:
- > <tnagy@ibm.net> wrote:
- >>Quite a few people here gave you good advices, but nobody seems to
- >>answer your question. Being a SYSTEMS Programmer is quite different
- >>from being a Programmer. While a programmer builds applications, the
- >>system programmer's job is to fine tune and maintain the computer system,
- >>so that the programmers and users can work on it as smoothly as possible.
- >>
- >>Some of the responsibilities (just to give you an idea):
- >>
- >>- install and maintain software packages
- >>- advise management of hardware/software requirements
- >>- monitor and improve access to system resources
- >>- setup new users (access rights, password, etc.)
- >>- solve system access problems
- >
- >Those are a system *administrator's* responsibilities. A systems
- >*programmer's* job is to write and maintain utilities and
- >operating-system level software.
-
- Theoretically you are absolutely correct. In practice, however, the two
- jobs came very close to each other. I was a systems programmer and I
- saw the shifting from programming to administrative work, that is why
- I moved to general programming. I should have added 'maintaining OS
- utilities' maybe, but 'real' programming is no longer something that you
- would do daily (maybe a few percent, if you are lucky). Programming
- experience on the other hand is almost mandatory, since you have to
- know how programmers think in order to satisfy them (if the company
- has programmers).
-
- >I do some of the system administration work here, and it doesn't involve a
- >lot of heavy programming... most of the programming I do is either (a)
- >writing perl scripts or shell scripts to automate "bookkeeping" tasks or
- >(b) porting software (which usually means tinkering with options in a
- >makefile, without writing or modifying actual C code).
-
- That was the sort of task that I was asked to do as a systems programmer...
- And of course, answering questions like 'which utility will do this for me'.
-
- Tom
-
-