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Well this debate I've seen before I'm in the 50's something bunch. In security you need one thing communication, in that I mean you have to sit in a room with a bunch of people that if you talk code are gonna glaze over hell they wnder why their mouse jumps (only cause they've not cleaned it for 3 years and it's the IT's dept to do it) and explain how and why you need to do the things you need to do to secure the network. Another is always gonna be be someone younger faster then you and more or less you have to keep them in focus. IT is great fun but throw in some business classes understand the needs of the people you work with and in any busisness production enviroment understand loading the latest hand written code and a re-boot is not an option during the day and even at night if there are remote workers is a pain. M$ hase bloated code with so many what they define as user wants and such your gonna be lucky just keeping up to speed on their latest release and patches. Understand what code is about, Admin a system especally if it is a Win system your not gonna have time. Learn it undestand how it is used nd unless your job is to program delegate it to the coders :) Hey works for me ! Then again I over see actual daily operations.
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Personally i dont think you need to know programming to be good at security. There are lots of tools out there that have been written by others to help you with your security work. As long as you know your area of expertise well enough, not knowing programming wont cause too much problems,
After saying that, i have to add that understanding programming really helps a lot as you can understand how things work better and maybe able to solve problems yourself without having to rely on others to come up with programs to help you in your work.
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Quote:
Originally posted here by N1ghtStalker
Thanks for all the replies, I never really considered starting with another programming language such as python or perl. This is something that I may look into.
As far as taking classes at a university goes I am currently attending a univeristy but I am a Biology major :wow: but I do love computers and I want to learn about them as a hobby. I know quite a bit about common troubleshooting with a PC but nothing about networkings and how they work.
I also have a copy of linux mandrake 9.0 that I downloaded from the mandrake site. I like it but I have a dsl modem that runs off of usb. I have found the drivers but I dont know enough about linux yet to install the drivers.
Thanks for all the help. :)
My suggestion to you is learn Python, definately a great language. The code migrates to all platforms and the language itself is rather extensive. You can do anything you want with it, and creating simple programs to ease your daily administrative burdens is no problem. If you are interested I have written a few python tutorials that are on the site. You can find them @
Python Introduction - http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=244619
Python Introduction II -
http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=244642
Python Introduction III - http://www.antionline.com/showthread...hreadid=244664
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I think it's vastly helpful to any sysadmin to be a programmer.
During my time as a sysadmin, I wrote numerous scripts to automate things - which obviously would have been much harder.
Yes the M$ lovers say you can do everything with Active Directory - I don't believe them. I have scripted many things which I don't have a clue how to do with AD.
In many cases you can avoid evaluating and buying expensive network management tools and create a more appropriate solution for your problem by being a programmer.
Slarty
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i dont think you really need a to know a programming language, although i think a scripting language is going to make you job allot easier, for instance say you wanna do the same think over and over again on a network of many computers, it would become pretty tedious to go round to every computer and do the same job again and again
like HTRegz said python is the best (IMO :D ) you can do anything with it and its portable with little difficulty to the majority of platforms, youve probably got it installed if you already got mandrake, try going to the shell and typing python.
You may need to install it but there should be the RPM on disk 2 of the mandrake set, or its not a very big download http://www.python.org
python has loads of modules availiable that really easy your need to do massives of programming, like the blinds in my bedroom are controlled with a ~10 line piece of python script, try doing that in C with the serial port
i2c
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well, go for shell scripts, thatss omething I can recommend. start with some basic shell programmes.Python and PERL are good languages to start with. or Otherwise if you want to administrate Micro$oft GUI based environment, start learning Batch files, and about the registry of that product. Programming is still involved to some extent.Being a god c
++ programmer always helps you to be a good administrator.
Bye
Ommy
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Hey,
Just wanted to add something else. I know a lot of people are going to knock me for this, but that's ok :)
What do you want to admin? If you are thinking Windows only, then VB is a very viable solution, even if not it's a place to get your foot in the door. That's the only language we were taught in my program, and the prof is a former network admin. He showed us some of the apps he'd developped for use in his network, all done in VB. It's a simple language and will let you do everything you need to.
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Quote:
Originally posted here by HTRegz
What do you want to admin? If you are thinking Windows only, then VB is a very viable solution, even if not it's a place to get your foot in the door. That's the only language we were taught in my program, and the prof is a former network admin. He showed us some of the apps he'd developped for use in his network, all done in VB. It's a simple language and will let you do everything you need to.
I actually thought about suggesting VB, but decided not to. The problem I have with VB is not that it's useless (which it isn't), but that I don't think it does a good job of teaching people what programming is about. I use MacOS, so don't think for a second that my anti-VB stance is due to a dislike of clickie buttons. However, VB tries to enforce a certain way of thinking about your code, and I object to that. Also, in my experience, TCP programming in VB is a pain. However, I haven't used recent versions, so that may no longer be the case. (OTOH, the HTTP interfaces in .NET are horrible, so I don't really expect that it's any better in VB.NET.)
Also, you have to buy/steal VB, whereas perl/python are free.
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Like what j3r and ommy where going at,
maybe you should start with shell scripting first.
It'll give you a really good insight on programming and make you a bit more flexable and enthused about starting a new and more complex language like C++ or Perl/PHP.
Just my two cents.
