Monthly Archives: March 2016
On Companies and Career Paths – a personal overview

Trying to start a career in a Computer Sciences field is a challenge by itself; starting with a good company is, most of the time, a matter of luck. I’m not trying to provide an alternate view to this – yes, one needs a ton of luck in order to get on with a good start. I’m just trying to show you where the train you just boarded may lead you – or where it may not. Switching trains is by any means possible, but it becomes harder as one gets older.

Without looking in depth, companies may be divided in 2 main categories:

  1. Product Owners: companies that build products for an actual market; they either sell software or provide services to private or business users through their internally managed infrastructure.

  2. Outsourcers: companies that sell “work units” directly or indirectly to either companies from the first category or to other businesses.

There are nuances to this classification; government contractors and start-ups may actually deserve categories of their own.

What can a fresh graduate expect out of each company type?

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Chef Cheat Sheet: The Basics

The big data repository known as Chef Server is manipulated with a tool called knife. The general (simplified) syntax for this tool is:

$ knife category command item

The category can be one of: environment, client, node, data bag, cookbook, … The full list can be found here.

The command (usually) is one of create, list, show, edit or delete. There are more commands, though, depending on what is being requested through knife.

On the cheat sheat itself, let’s start with some classics:

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