I don't consider you a scripter if...

macdonjo3 · Feb 2, 2015

---- THREAD CLOSED 03/19/2015 ----
I don't believe you can be considered a scripter if you cannot install your website through SSH linux command line with FTP. If you can't take a digital ocean server and install apache, mysql, and configure the domain with apache, before uploading your built project, I really don't think you can call yourself a scripter. I've hired way too many freelancers in the past who could build a stellar PHP website, but when it came to putting it on the server, they needed a cPanel. We are not building a compiler here, it's not that hard and I don't know how you can skip the fundamentals.

What do you guys think about these web-based programmers who can't use basic commands like ssh, ls, cd, cat, vim, etc?

qrazy · Feb 2, 2015

PHP is a cross-platform language, so the programmer doesn't necessarily need to know SSH which is a remote administration tool for *NIX environment. Although it's good for any web-based programmer to have the basic knowledge of WHM, Cpanel, SSH or shell scripting, it's not mandatory. Ideally, you should have hired a LAMP pro rather than a PHP programmer in your case.

Conor · Feb 2, 2015

Lol. I'm not a scripter at all, but I see this as a pointless standard to be expected of other scripters.

That's like saying "I don't consider you a chef, if you've never slaughtered and skinned a sheep on a farm before.".

Not all shortcuts are bad.

pxoxrxn · Feb 2, 2015

If it's not that hard then do it yourself? You're it's not that hard an it's much quicker/cheaper to do it yourself.

macdonjo3 · Feb 2, 2015

qrazy said:
PHP is a cross-platform language, so the programmer doesn't necessarily need to know SSH which is a remote administration tool for *NIX environment. Although it's good for any web-based programmer to have the basic knowledge of WHM, Cpanel, SSH or shell scripting, it's not mandatory. Ideally, you should have hired a LAMP pro rather than a PHP programmer in your case.

Should have, yep. There's a reason top schools teach linux before even getting into PHP. I just expected simple stuff like this.

Treeofl1 said:
Lol. I'm not a scripter at all, but I see this as a pointless standard to be expected of other scripters.

That's like saying "I don't consider you a chef, if you've never slaughtered and skinned a sheep on a farm before.".

Not all shortcuts are bad.

If you're not a scripter, how do you know what "it's like saying" lol?

I see what you're saying, but the real equivalent would be like, "I don't consider you a chef if can't put your product on a plate to serve to the customer." What you are saying it more like "I don't consider you a scripter if you can't build your website in C"... We are talking about an obstacle with the deliverables here, not with the materials of initially building the product. You can build a site, great, then what? You don't know how to deploy it.

pxoxrxn said:
If it's not that hard then do it yourself? You're it's not that hard an it's much quicker/cheaper to do it yourself.

I'm trying to be more hands off with my projects. Keep the simple work for the people who do simple jobs.

handmadebots · Feb 2, 2015

I think that before you start programming (especially PHP, that mostly runs on linux), you should learn the linux basics.
I am not saying that you have to be a linux geek, but ... at least know what ls, cd, cat, grep, less, more, wc, ssh, mv, cp, chmod does, and know at least one editor like vim,nano.

Vanrithy · Feb 2, 2015

I do agree as someone who could script and produce website but could not script access to put it on the hosting server is not fine; mostly it basic to configure server to host the script(s) they've scripted.

But, if you expect them to configure an unmanaged into fully managed server, it's not a choice. That's the SysAdmin specialist not scripter task.

accelerator_dd · Feb 2, 2015

Treeofl1 said:
Lol. I'm not a scripter at all, but I see this as a pointless standard to be expected of other scripters.

That's like saying "I don't consider you a chef, if you've never slaughtered and skinned a sheep on a farm before.".

Not all shortcuts are bad.

No, that's like saying - cooking microwave food doesn't make you a chef. I agree with macdonjo - you should know at least the Linux basics if you are developing for Linux.

qrazy · Feb 2, 2015

handmadebots said:
I think that before you start programming (especially PHP, that mostly runs on linux), you should learn the linux basics.
I am not saying that you have to be a linux geek, but ... at least know what ls, cd, cat, grep, less, more, wc, ssh, mv, cp, chmod does, and know at least one editor like vim,nano.

accelerator_dd said:
No, that's like saying - cooking microwave food doesn't make you a chef. I agree with macdonjo - you should know at least the Linux basics if you are developing for Linux.

Learning the basics is all fine.. But the problem here is the presumption that PHP developers should know or knew linux administration. This could have been smartly avoided by hiring the right person for the job or at least by inquiring about the skillset at the beginning...

zeroto100k · Feb 2, 2015

macdonjo3 said:
Should have, yep. There's a reason top schools teach linux before even getting into PHP. I just expected simple stuff like this.

If you're not a scripter, how do you know what "it's like saying" lol?

I see what you're saying, but the real equivalent would be like, "I don't consider you a chef if can't put your product on a plate to serve to the customer." What you are saying it more like "I don't consider you a scripter if you can't build your website in C"... We are talking about an obstacle with the deliverables here, not with the materials of initially building the product. You can build a site, great, then what? You don't know how to deploy it.

The reason most schools teach linux is because you can take a look under the hood of an OS and really learn whatever is going on below. All mainstream OSes deal with approximately the same set of problems, and by knowing how they solve them is how you develop a general view on the subject. There're some things you just can't do on Windows.

Getting back on topic, you should know that different sofware shops have a different implementation of their development pipeline. There are some where 2 or 3 programmers handle EVERYTHING (from coding to QA and deployment, and don't forget DBAs) and there're others where entire teams are dedicated exclusively to coding, QA and deployment. There are places where no one expects a developer to know how to deploy an app on production, or run UX tests. We could argue all day if this is the correct way of developing software (I don't think so) since there are lots of books on the subject, but that is a discussion for another thread.

Deployment and development are two different things, independently of the size of the project. I would be very explicit on my needs if I were you when hiring developers.

NetCrime · Feb 2, 2015

You don't consider her a musician

if she can't do this?

TheVegan · Feb 2, 2015

Yes a programmer should certainly have to know about deploying and what not...

Diplomat · Feb 2, 2015

It's really funny.. It's like, if you don't create tests in your script you are a bad programmer.. if you don't use git or similar stuff, you are a bad programmer, if you don't use latest javascript libraries you are a bad programmer, or if you don't do anything that those idiot, small minded hipster punks are telling you.. or those sad "guru" programmers, then you are a bad programmer.

Just because I don't like to use vim or emacs doesn't make me a bad programmer.. Sooo, after this grammatically incorrect longass sentence.. No, if you don't know basic linux commands that's allright.. only if you don't use linux. If you do use linux as your platform then obviously you need to know them. It would make your life easier and cheaper if you do use linux, but I believe it's your choice and nobody should give you any shits because of that. As long as you provide high quality, working code (it would be nice if it would be well optimized too) then you should be all good, no matter what you use or how.

PolitikZ · Feb 2, 2015

Ever heard of system administrator? I don't think programmer necessarily has to know sysadmin stuff

accelerator_dd · Feb 2, 2015

Diplomat said:
It's really funny.. It's like, if you don't create tests in your script you are a bad programmer.. if you don't use git or similar stuff, you are a bad programmer, if you don't use latest javascript libraries you are a bad programmer, or if you don't do anything that those idiot, small minded hipster punks are telling you.. or those sad "guru" programmers, then you are a bad programmer.

Just because I don't like to use vim or emacs doesn't make me a bad programmer.. Sooo, after this grammatically incorrect longass sentence.. No, if you don't know basic linux commands that's allright.. only if you don't use linux. If you do use linux as your platform then obviously you need to know them. It would make your life easier and cheaper if you do use linux, but I believe it's your choice and nobody should give you any shits because of that. As long as you provide high quality, working code (it would be nice if it would be well optimized too) then you should be all good, no matter what you use or how.

I completely agree. However, if you accept to work on a project hosted on a linux box, you can't expect the employer to change the PHP variables for you for example.

I am in the same boat as you, when coding for php, I always code in Notepad++ on windows or vim/linux and all this is very rare since I mainly work with Microsoft technologies contrary to what most people i've met prefer.

Git comes in handy for version control, even if it's local repo only, works great if you want to come back to a project after x amount of time and to see why you changed things the way you did.

Tests are not essential, but they do cut down the time it takes you to test new features in complex projects, and if you want to run a large scale test on all user inputs, good luck doing that manually. If you build a big SaaS that has 1000s of inputs that can go wrong, you will quickly leave out some crucial places to test out. It won't mean the world ends because you did, but it would be nice if you didn't.

Diplomat · Feb 2, 2015

accelerator_dd said:
I completely agree. However, if you accept to work on a project hosted on a linux box, you can't expect the employer to change the PHP variables for you for example.

I am in the same boat as you, when coding for php, I always code in Notepad++ on windows or vim/linux and all this is very rare since I mainly work with Microsoft technologies contrary to what most people i've met prefer.

Git comes in handy for version control, even if it's local repo only, works great if you want to come back to a project after x amount of time and to see why you changed things the way you did.

Tests are not essential, but they do cut down the time it takes you to test new features in complex projects, and if you want to run a large scale test on all user inputs, good luck doing that manually. If you build a big SaaS that has 1000s of inputs that can go wrong, you will quickly leave out some crucial places to test out. It won't mean the world ends because you did, but it would be nice if you didn't.

That's correct. for PHP I use PHPStorm 7 and I love it.. it doesn't make me a less competent programmer than those who say they use emacs or vi or vim or whatever. Yes, I do agree with what you said about tests and version management. BUT.. there's a big but (not butt, sorry). Rarely freelancers/one guy bands do super big and complicated SaaS projects. Also Git and Github (and others) are useful yes, but I rarely use it because I know what I'm doing and my programming style (well named functions/variables tell the story), but yeah, if I'd have to build and maintain some kind of project for a company then I'd use it because if I'd had to share my code with other programmers.. they can see what has happened and why.

macdonjo3 · Feb 4, 2015

NetCrime said:
You don't consider her a musician

View attachment 60227

if she can't do this?

View attachment 60228

Lol if you think knowing basic linux commands is as difficult as playing multiple instruments at once, you shouldn't be in the industry

I'm saying I don't call her a musician if she can't play the final product

jazzc · Feb 6, 2015

It's completely irrelevant. There's a ton of services aimed for hip front-ender programmers who can't/won't use a linux toolchain.

What's the chance those $150k/year Silicon Valley guys cry every night because they don't meet your arbitrary criterion?

macdonjo3 · Feb 6, 2015

jazzc said:
It's completely irrelevant. There's a ton of services aimed for hip front-ender programmers who can't/won't use a linux toolchain.

What's the chance those $150k/year Silicon Valley guys cry every night because they don't meet your arbitrary criterion?

hahah, you're comparing $150k/year to Internet freelancers here, but I'll run with it. If they're working for an established company, there's also a very large number of them who went to top-tiered schools and know the 10 absolute most-basic linux commands from 1st or 2nd year. They also have the brain power to follow a 5 step Digital Ocean tutorial to login via SSH and login to MySQL to create a database and tables. Being in the tech industry in Silicon Valley usually means you can adapt quick.

If you label yourself as a PHP and MySQL dev, you should be able to the following:

ssh root@myip
mypass
mysql -u root -p
mypass
Then, you should know your command to create a database without using a GUI if you're listed as a MySQL dev too.

Don't side with the script kiddies. Sure, there are a few exceptions, but you and I both know the broad generalization is pretty damn accurate. If you're developing PHP sites as a freelancer, you should know how to deploy t.

jazzc · Feb 6, 2015

macdonjo3 said:
hahah, you're comparing $150k/year to Internet freelancers here, but I'll run with it. If they're working for an established company, there's also a very large number of them who went to top-tiered schools and know the 10 absolute most-basic linux commands from 1st or 2nd year.

So, we have this:
a) Big established companies don't consider deployment a programming skill.
b) You do.

Your point is?

If you're developing PHP sites as a freelancer, you should know how to deploy t.

Maybe in the low-end market segment you're looking to hire. Then you take that and generalize it: "you can't deploy -> you're not a programmer". See the problem in the logic here?

I don't consider you a scripter if...

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