[Blog] Left behind
Feeling a little left behind at the moment. Checking job sites will do that for you.
Most of the jobs that I'm seeing have moved beyond scripting for the day-to-day work and use it as administrative glue. So Python / Perl are seen as the tools for making sure the backed works, not for doing the actual work. Golang is the new hotness for the back-end processing and heavy-lifting. Which is fine and good, save for I haven't had a whole lot of opportunity to play with AWS on any scale (most of my administrative positions have been with companies that preferred to keep mot of their systems in-house). Add to that my perpetual non-use of Javascript (which has taken over the front-end of the web) and I'm starting to think I made some bad calls in my developer life.
It feels like anything that isn't on the resume as "professional experience" doesn't count.
Is there a way to start with AWS that doesn't cost a lot of money and can get me up to speed fast?
At the coffeeshop that we meet at for Coffee House Coders I remember a conversation where I told another developer what I did (Python and Linux). He commented that was "Old School Development". At the time I was offended, but now I'm thinking he was right.
Anyway, it sounds like you have some tremendous skills. Demand for Python developers remains strong (although I know a lot depends on geography), and understanding operating systems well enough to administer machines should be knowledge that is transferable. After all, whether containers or virtual machines, it's still the same tech under the hood. Your skills and knowledge are still useful.
I wish I had some advice on AWS. It's something I keep intending to play with, but I never find time to do. For one thing, I hear bad stories about billing snafus or virtual machines that Amazon keeps alive but are nowhere to be seen in dashboards. Maybe it's better these days, but I prefer to play with solutions where I know that I can't exceed my budget (just in case I screw something up). I do not need crazy surprise bills.