Ask HN: What programming language do you use for system administration?

5 points·yr··9 comments

What programming language do you use for system administration, infrastructure and deployments ?

For Linux/Unix systems, definetely shell scripts (or perl for more complicates tasks).

Those are everywhere by default.

I prefer ruby for scripting but if you are working on multiple *nix systems then you really do need to stick with "the basics".

For my sysadmin work involves 1. Backups 2. Installation 3. Performance monitoring 4. Configuration management

And the only thing I use for this is Shell scripts. In fact I am not sure if there is any other option. But then I am not a system administrator, its my part time duty.

Only Python, these days.

In very rare cases (when it's simply a sequential list of commands) I still use shell scripts, but I try to replace them with Python programs as soon as any logic, text/data processing or sane error handling is needed.

Shell & Perl, in that order. I'd like to use Python & Ruby, I've just been through the motions with Perl so many times over the years, I end up using it. Unless it requires a CPAN download, then Python/Ruby.

Sysadmin: Python, Perl and bash. Infra: Python and bash Deployments: Fabric (so, more Python)

shell, perl & python, whichever fits the particular task best.

Cron jobs & similar are usually shell, various helper scripts are perl, and my deployment system is written in python.

bash & ruby for general scripts

puppet for infrastructure configuration

bash, ruby and/or capistrano for deployments

perl + CPAN and bash .

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