Dear,

I am undergraduate and going to finish my study in the coming May. I now have a basic skill of Shell Programming. I going to get into industry soon. Basically I am joining a company sort of Networking/Administrator Server(Linux)/Telecommunications.

So, my question now is, it is sufficient for me to have only the skill of Shell Programming? or any other programming that can be use for server? Perl or any others?
Because I am going to have some basic on this programming before i really get into the industry.

Please comment some, thank you.

Shell programming is a good start, but learn as much as you can!
Bash, Ksh (just in case), Perl, ..., the list is endless. Also, look into the different syntaxes with some of the different daemons' conf files!

What program are you studying for your undergrad?

Thank for your reply. I am studying degree of electronics engineering majoring Telecommunications in Malaysia. So basically what I am asking is more on IT, I suppose to focus on my hardware engineering. In Malaysia, it is totally different to Western, we are learning to earn for living and not to creating or come out with something. But anyway, thank you.

my friends,

the point is you can decide to know as many programming languages you desire but the fact remains that with linux, you must have a good idea of shell programming.

Honestly said, you don't With Linux (or GNU/Linux operating systems, for those who are picky) you don't, nowadays at least, need to know any kind of programming at all to be able to use the things. Even as an administrator it is nowadays not necessarily needed to know any sort of programming. You can get the basic admin tasks done without python, perl, shell scripts etc. The point is, you can make your life easier if you know a bit of those; it is not needed to be a master of seven different languages, but to know a few tricks that help you in your particular work. Shell scripts are the most general (in my opinion) and often the most useful in automating some tasks, but beyond that, whole programs can be written that help you out in your work. Python, for example (and yes, Perl, and the others - I just took Python as an example of an interpreted programming language), can be used to build programs for many tasks, or tie up pieces written in other programming languages such as C to make a whole.

It's not even difficult to learn the basics of these programming languages. The real difficulty is knowing when you should use a programming language to make something for you (or when it takes the same time if you do it yourself) and which programming language you should choose for the task. Nearly all if not all programming languages (especially if we are talking about interpreted languages) can do all tasks that "the other language" can do, some of them just make some things easier than the others (note: there is no best language; which one is better for the situation depends on the task at hand).

I would recommend learning the basics of C also. It's a bit different from Python/Perl/shell scripting, but it brings you quickly to the way in which programs are created, and with C it's, I think, somewhat easy to understand why one way of programming is more efficient (shorter, faster, ...) than some other. Certainly it doesn't harm you. C++ wouldn't do bad either, but if you would prefer interpreted languages and not want to dive into the rest of the programming things at the moment, C is what I recommend. It is a smallish language (compared to the others), and so the basics are quickly learnt. Shell scripting is a swiss army knife to work with, and in addition Python is what I find myself using from time to time. Perl is somewhat similar, but like I said, it's what you prefer and what you do.

Certainly you can't learn too much, or too many languages. Just don't try to learn 20 languages at a time; better know the basics and maybe slightly more about one or two languages than small pieces of eight And if it's not about pure curiosity, but a need created by your work, I encourage you even stronger to focus on one or two languages (read: shell scripting and in addition, if you can, Python or equivalent).

Hi -

Simply knowing how to write shell scripts is not enought for any IT-related position, anywhere.

But the real questions are:
1. What are you interested in doing?
2. What opportunities exist for candidates with those interests?
3. What are some of the other prerequisites for those positions?

IMHO .. PSM

PS:
Arguably the single best thing you can try to do is to look for an internship. Both your hands-on experience from the internship, as well as the initiative you showed seeking out and successfully completing an internship, are bound to impress potential employers. I encourage you to think about it!

The job i looking for is as below, but i don't know which of them really need shell scripting, as some of our friends have mentioned; the job of being an Administrator is more easy than ever that we know need have a deep shell scripting skills. Please give me some comment and guide.

1.System Engineer / System Administrator (Linux)

Responsibilities:

Setup and maintain a number of servers farm located throughout the world.

Setup Apache, database, clustering, load-balancing, firewalls under linux environment.

Coordination and testing of development systems in conjunction with application development team.

Exploring advanced subjects such as Linux virtual server, db clustering / Replication, Security, IDS & etc.

Schedule network & servers maintenance.

From the above position, I see non of the tasks required shell scripting. What actually the jobs of administrator, other than maintaining the server? Which the subsequent programming language to learn if i tell you that I have the knowledge in C, Assembly, HTML and Novice Shell Scripting. If want to be an administrator.

Malaysian company now seen to migrate to the Linux server and what i found out that most of these server (physically in US), especially web hosting having some sort of problems, slow when we from Malaysia request the data from US. Please tell me some of your experience.

Thanks.