Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2002 12:23:31 +0100 From: Frank Sonnemans <fs.mail@wanadoo.be> To: rene@xs4all.nl, questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: what is a good language for system administration? Message-ID: <2989697348.1012307011@[192.168.1.1]> In-Reply-To: <20020119205810.B17795@xs4all.nl>
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I tried many languages and settled on a combination of shell programming (zsh) and ruby. My experiences with some of the alternatives mentioned in this thread are as follows: perl: I did some usefull work with it, but had a horrible time with it after not having used it for some months. python: Much clearer syntax, but not fully object oriented with incompatibilities moving into the 2.x series. I much disliked the inconsistent syntax. It seems this has improved with the later versions. I got bitten by things as calculating the length of a string, which in the 1.x series was a function and in the 2.x version became a method call. Also the syntax for object oriented programming is ugly. java: Much to difficult to learn and use. It takes concepts from the excellent (20 years old) Smalltalk, patches it up with C and strong typing to create an awkward to use language. I would argue use smalltalk instead. ruby: Perl on steroids. Uses strengths of perl with elegance of smalltalk and some parts of python. Has an very nice consistent syntax and lends itself to writing clear maintainable programs. Fully object oriented, but you can still throw together a simple program without creating any classes. --On Saturday, January 19, 2002 20:58 +0100 rene@xs4all.nl wrote: > So I've learned how to do basic scripting in /bin/sh. But boy-oh-boy is > that language arcane. ;-) > > What other language do you guys advise for system administration tasks > such as > * checking if a remote host is up > * pumping files & RAM data through external tools > * calling scripts written in the same language on a remote machine, to > 'pickup' data that was pumped to that machine by a local script. > > My wishlist for the language, prioritized with most important first: > * portability! to other UNIXes, and even Windoze. > * low system demands - it needs to run on lowend boxes aswell > * clear organization of any 'plugins' (which need to be replicated on > other machines aswell) > * a nice errorhandling & logging system > > I could really use some clues here. PHP comes into mind, but maybe there > are other better options? > > Friendly greets, > Rene Veerman > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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