There's a whole generation of sysadmins that use docker so that they can stay away from foundational knowledge. We interview experienced devops who do not know/understand how to build basic packages from source (e.g. they don't understand the ./configure, make, make install chain) and who only have basic knowledge of the underlying operating system.
But so far, life has been too short for me to waste my time on Gnu Autoconf. And I don't feel guilty about this, or like someone who doesn't know fundamentals.
Autoconf is by all accounts a horrible system. Gnu Make ain't much better.
So I can't fault people for trying to avoid this mess.
Autoconf is just really terrible.
Sendmail is another great example of this phenomenon.
Just like PHP and COBOL solved real problems back in their heyday.
They are just not something anyone should be using nowadays.
(Btw, Facebook's Hack is a surprisingly pleasant language. Probably the best one they could have made, coming from PHP.)
I guess it depends, take Vim for example: been around since the early 90s, the developers are familiar with autoconf, and it seems to work well for them. Why fix something if it ain't broke?
Switching build systems is not necessarily an easy task. Also, as a user I always found cmake quite hard to deal with. Actually, as a user, I actually prefer autotools in spite of its shortcomings. I think there's still quite a bit to win here.
Either way, I personally wouldn't really call autoconf "terrible".
And, yes, switching an existing system is a different proposition from starting from scratch.
Though see what the Neovim people have been doing to remove some of the accumulated cruft from Vim, if you are interested.
Ex-Amazon here. Being deeply familiar with OS fundamentals and internals, "low level" tools, and so on is crucial.
A lot of candidates show to interviews with CVs filled with names of popular frameworks and fancy devops tools and often don't understand what really happens behind the curtain.
People are becoming less familiar with the basics and tend to reinvent the wheel. In many teams this does not get you hired.
> Being deeply familiar with OS fundamentals and internals, "low level" tools, and so on is crucial.
...needs to be front and center on the job description then. Far too often these kinds of things are hidden on the initial job descriptions and it just wastes everyone's time. I get that HR/recruiters want to throw a big net but vague job descriptions are often part of the problem.