Layers of (non)abstraction

I couldn't sleep the other night, and to try to put myself to sleep, I figured I'd try some remedial programming. I grabbed the Linux 3d Graphics Programming book because it's A) relatively interesting, and B) actually a pretty good primer if you want to refresh the basics of how programming, windowed interfaces, and 3d graphics in general work.

While reading through the section on object factories, a realization hit me. There is an inherent difference in the way that programmers work and systems administrators work. Take the idea of objects, for example. As a programmer, as long as you know the interfaces to an object, you don't have to know anything else at all about the object. You don't need to know its inner structure, you don't care how its variables are defined inside, you just want to know how to access it.

I can't think of a single thing in the whole IT infrastructure that a sysadmin can look at as a black box. Even a server may need to be taken apart and repaired. Heck, I know guys who replace blown capacitors on motherboards. From the base electronics up through logical network design, sysadmins have to cover it all, and the smaller the shop, the more you have to know. I sometimes laugh (and other times lament) the fact that I can be interrupted from enterprise storage design to fix someone's broken mouse, and both are equally valid parts of my job.

I was talking to someone a while back about an open position that they had, and they asked me how wide ranging my experience was. I thought for a second, and said “Do you see that lightswitch? At my company, if it was broke, I'd have to fix it”.

Such is the life of a sysadmin, I suppose. I have wondered if I would even be happy at a place where I didn't have so many different things to do. I think I could somehow manage.


By the way, I'm in the NY/NJ area working this week, so updates may be (even more) sporadic. Just fair warning :-)