Yeah. I know some very good developers who were first SysAdmins. Even I have written a patch here and there to various system programs. To 'level up' as a sysadmin, even if you don't want to be a dev, you do need to know some programming. I don't know if I have the attention span to sit down and write a large app from end to end, but many times I've had to hack up the programs a client was using. I once patched courier-imap so my employer could continue to use the same UIDLs
Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename... so I hacked it so that if the filename started with 0x, it treated the filename as a hex-encoded UIDL. (otherwise it acted as normal... that way next time they upgrade the courier server, they probably don't need to include my patch... most of the old 0x mails will be gone in a number of months.) A simple change, but it allowed us to move to maildir (which isn't always faster, but in this case was massively faster) without disturbing the customers. But yeah. as a more senior SysAdmin, you are expected to occasionally deal with that sort of thing. Being able to kindof read debugger output also really helps.
Oh, also the 'got lucky' comment was more about coming of age during the .com boom than about becoming a SysAdmin. The .com boom (and my timing) was luck. Becoming a SysAdmin, well, that was more the 'path of least resistance' at least once I got started down this path.
"... Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename... ..."
Not write a whole system app but the tools (like "duplo") so other devs can use them without shooting themselves in the foot having to learn or experiment in very specific niches.
Ugh. nearly all customers were using pop3 like IMAP- 'leave mail on server' the problem was that UIDLS needed to stay the same, (the UIDL value is an identifier of a pop3 message- the pop3 client uses it keep track of what messages are new in the pathalogical 'leave messages on server' scheme. If we changed the UIDLs, all messages would be 'new' to the mail client and customers would scream.) and qpopper UIDLs contain characters that can't be in filenames, while courier-imap's pop3 daemon uses the UIDL for the filename... so I hacked it so that if the filename started with 0x, it treated the filename as a hex-encoded UIDL. (otherwise it acted as normal... that way next time they upgrade the courier server, they probably don't need to include my patch... most of the old 0x mails will be gone in a number of months.) A simple change, but it allowed us to move to maildir (which isn't always faster, but in this case was massively faster) without disturbing the customers. But yeah. as a more senior SysAdmin, you are expected to occasionally deal with that sort of thing. Being able to kindof read debugger output also really helps.
Oh, also the 'got lucky' comment was more about coming of age during the .com boom than about becoming a SysAdmin. The .com boom (and my timing) was luck. Becoming a SysAdmin, well, that was more the 'path of least resistance' at least once I got started down this path.