[lug] getting started in the IT industry, focus on FOSS

[Michael J. Hammel]

On Tue, 2009-12-22 at 07:42 -0700, Ash Mohatt wrote:
> If you could say 3 or 9 essential skillsets, what would you suggest?
> Are there good "entry certs" that are worth more then the paper
> they're printed on?

For IT jobs: security and filesystems.  And learn about the hardware you
run on.  Green IT is the future of data centers.

Did anyone read the article on how Facebook could save something like
20,000 servers by switching from PHP to C?  Wild.

I don't do certs so can't recommend any.  If you wanna be a developer
for R&D environs, the direction you take depends on the direction you
want to go - towards the hardware or away from it.  The former is C and
embedded development tools (cross compilers, BusyBox, even Android and
that ilk).  The latter is probably web technologies like web servers,
PHP/Python and AJAX, but I'd still learn C.  Maybe even (yuck) web
service containers like JBoss.  Even the desktop may end up adopting web
technologies, much as I hate that idea. 

Try not to learn Silverlight or Mono.  Let us let them die a quick and
merciful death.

That, at least, is a start.
-- 
Michael J. Hammel                                    Principal Software Engineer
mjhammel at graphics-muse.org                           http://graphics-muse.org
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Finally, one has to just shut up, sit down and write.  --  Natalie Goldberg