on scripting languages
There's a difference between System Administrators and Programmers. Most of the time, a Programmer isn't familiar with the internal workings of the network he's logging into; just as most System Administrators aren't well versed in kernel programming.
Although each person can have successful careers not knowing anything about the other side, it's definitely beneficial to, at least, know the basics. An Admin who can program can accomplish much more by automation than one who does everything manually. However, for an Admin to have a full understanding of a language like C++ or Java, it would take too much time (and thought) away from administration. It's for that reason that more "simpler" languages are appealing.
What the Programmers call "Dynamic Languages", the Admins call "Scripting Languages". Several exist -- all rising and falling in popularity all the time. Even the concept of a "Dynamic Language" is receiving a fair amount of hype and discussion these days.
With all the recent talk and attention on scripting languages, it's easy for an Admin to lose sight on his original intentions: the use of scripting for automation. For example, I've seen several discussions on the topic of threading. As interesting as these discussions are, they have no relevance to system administration. (I can think of only one occasion where threading would be important in scripting, and that's to daemonize a process. If you've ever used threading elsewhere, I'd be interested in knowing).
Other arguments exist on topics like unicode, frameworks, ORMs, blocks, scalability, etc. Again, these are all interesting topics, but they really don't have a lot of relevance in system administration.
As an Administrator, the primary features I look for in a scripting language are: ability to talk to other programs, process text, and to run autonomously. All modern scripting languages implement these features -- some differently than others, which gives a nice range of choice.
So, just as the programming crowd has their discussions on features they feel are important, admins can have theirs, too -- just be sure the topics are relevant to the field: making administration easier.
