Three Tools Every devops person Should Know

A common question posed online is ‘I want to get into devops, which tools should I learn’. Putting aside the issue of ‘getting into devops’, the most common responses are for people to learn configuration management tools like Ansible, Chef, Puppet, or Salt quickly followed by advice to learn Docker, Kubernetes, etc.

My advice is more grounded. If you want to spend limited time learning tools that will serve you well then learn these three.

Git

There is probably no development or operational environment in the world where you won’t find Git being used in some form or another. Even if you find yourself in a place using another version control system, knowing Git and using it in your own workflow will serve you well.

Learning the basics of git takes only a few minutes and a few hours of learning will provide you with enough knowledge of git to cover 99% of use cases you’re likely to require.

shell programming

If you’re in UNIX land, learn bash scripting, if you’re in Windows land learn PowerShell. If you’re working in devops then trust me you’re going to spend a lot of time gluing things together and shell scripting is often the quickest and easiest way to do this. Sure, python, ruby, go, etc. are all important too, but you’ll always have a shell available where you may not have one of these languages to hand.

vim (or plain vi)

Trust me, as a devops, you’re going to be working at the terminal a lot and fancy GUI editors won’t be available but vim, or at least vi will be (in UNIX land anyway). When you find yourself SSH into a sick box and need to edit a text file the one editor you’re likely to find on 99.9% of UNIX installation is vi (and on most vim). Learning vi (at least the basics of open, navigate, edit, and save) will make your life much easier.

Windows land people I guess you’re more likely have GUI access so this one may not apply so much, but if you work in a heterogeneous environment then learning vim will be useful and you could install GVim (a Windows vim) and use that instead of shudder Notepad.