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An example of "right tool for the job"

I can remember going to work for a small engineering firm in Southern Indiana after working several years as am Informix SQL/4GL programmer and backup AT&T Unix System V admin. This was around 1994. One of my first tasks was to get a new file server up and running to store AutoCad drawings. The company used Novell Netware with Windows 3.11 clients. I had recently run across a Linux distribution called Slackware, an especially popular distro with Unix folks because it was so similar in look and feel.

I spent an evening at home downloading everything I needed for the Linux installation. I then went out the next morning and bought the biggest hard drive I could find for an existing 486 they had lying around. It took about an hour and a half installing Slackware, figuring out how to get it working on the Novell network and be able to map to it from a Windows client machine. It was on a UPS that would keep it running for 30 minutes, and our building had it's own generators that would kick in after 15 minutes of power loss.

I worked at this company for 3 years and never had to touch that box again. Not once. That's using the right tool for the job. For a few hours of my time in 1994, the company had a file server that required no support for the next 4 years (a year after I left I was informed that the PC was finally replaced with a faster box that could handle much more hard drive space). Of course, the replacement was a Linux box.

Linux is most definitely worth using. People without a clue might miss the opportunity though. The term "five nines" is just now beginning to be used in conjuction with Microsoft without peals of laughter directly following behind. Unix, Linux and Mainframes have been living in that world for years. The operating system is a utility, and picking the best utility for a given job is what professional IT personnel are for.

Too many IT "professionals" think a hammer for every job is appropriate. I like to call those kinds of people "hacks". And then there are those who fall even further down on the totem pole. Those who see others using more tools than they are comfortable with, so they just make fun of the real professionals. Those people I like to call "loveys".

Posted by: jasonp@...   Posted on: 03/24/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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