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Was Programming Always this Fun?!? | IT Journeys Part 2

Hey everyone! Baba here, hope you’ve all been well!

It’s been a little while since I last wrote something, so I wanted to take some time and talk about what I’ve been up to. Lots of new things are going on at work, and I think I’ve ignited a new passion. I’ll try to reign in some things, but this is going to cover a lot. So, buckle in, and enjoy!

Sailing the seas of Azure, and becoming an expert:

 

Thanks to a wonderful manager, and an equally awesome team, I was selected to help push out our expanded Microsoft Azure offerings at work. For those that may not be completely aware:

Microsoft Azure is a cloud computing platform and service offered by Microsoft. In simple terms, it’s like a massive online infrastructure that provides various tools, resources, and services to help individuals and businesses build, manage, and deploy applications and digital solutions.

Instead of using their own computers or servers, users can access Azure’s vast computing resources over the internet, which allows them to store data, run applications, and scale their services as needed. This helps save costs and provides a flexible, secure, and efficient environment to meet the ever-changing demands of modern technology.

At work we have decided to slowly start with just Azure Virtual Desktops, but this is quickly expanding into other places. I see it definitely growing in the future to a massive offering, and I’m excited to be a part of it. The biggest hurdle with learning Azure, I think, is just learning how specifically they do things. A lot of the core concepts of the offering I understand. But, knowing something “academically”, and being able to actually DO it, are two entirely different concepts. It is both a wide, and deep pool of knowledge, and learning the intricacies has taken time. Thankfully, Microsoft offers a pretty robust library of learning topics that are completely free (seriously, Microsoft Learn is an incredible resource given that it’s free and self-paced). I’ve also supplemented my learning with YouTubers like John Savill, who have a plethora of free training on their channels.

An unexpected facet of Azure has really caught my attention, though. That being: Automation and Scripting.

I’ve never enjoyed NOT knowing something so much!

 

In my job, as with a lot of IT jobs, there are many repetitive tasks that have to be done. As I started learning Azure, and learning the scripts/commands that come with it, I started to see things that I could do to help our day-to-day job as well. We already had a decent collection of one-off scripts that we used for daily tasks, like giving calendar delegation to an Office 365 account. But, what about those times that we might need to do that A LOT? Maybe this is a calendar that every employee needs access to. Are we going to have our techs run a single command 100+ times to get every employee?

Nah, let’s just write out a script that does it for everyone, instead of just one person.

And that’s what I’ve started doing. I’ve been looking at our scripts that we do frequently in work, and sought out ways to make it even easier to do regularly. In fact, why would we even have a ton of different scripts for one-off things? Why not just write a full program that lets them CHOOSE what commands they want to run? And before I knew it, I was in the rabbit hole, going deeper and deeper.

At first, I was completely out of my element. I learned some very basic programming years ago just to grasp the core concepts of what it does. But I was FAR from being able to do things like this. So, I just dove in, and tried. I’d find a command that I thought would work, I’d put it into my script, and then it wouldn’t work! So, I’d have to go back and figure out what this error means. I would Google the errors, look for similar scripts and compare, anything to just find out the solution I wanted. And before long, I started getting to the point where I was Googling less and less.

Soon, my coworkers would learn that I was doing more and more with this, and they’d offer suggestions for things I could make. And, before I knew it, I had created a pretty large library of scripts for my team to use. There were coworkers on different teams coming to me asking for help on their own projects. And I was gobbling it up like the sweetest and most delicious candy.

Turns out Azure has a large need for stuff like this, too!

 

As I continued my journey into Azure, learning the ropes, I saw just how often scripting and programming is used on the platform. Everything from creating virtual machines, networks, the entire Kubernetes platform. The Azure Resource Manager has templates that can be written in code that will automate how resources are created, and where. It blew me away how much demand there was for this kind of knowledge. For those that aren’t aware: Kubernetes is a platform that allows for deployment, scaling, and management of containers (that is a rabbit-hole in and of itself, maybe one of these days I’ll cover that some more in my HomeLab adventures). For now, think of them as even SMALLER virtual machines made to do one very specific task.

There is still so much for me to learn about Azure as a whole, but I’ve found a new fascination that I will use to grow professionally. I’ve already started using programming in my HomeLab, and I can only see it going further from here. Maybe here soon I can become an Azure developer and learn all of this on an even bigger scale. I’ll be sure to keep you all posted!

Closing thoughts and a small bit of advice…

I won’t gush too much in closing, but I will say this: If any of this seems interesting there has never been a better time to start! I’m in a small sub-set of IT in general, and programming/scripting is literally everywhere you look. Automation will only become more necessary as we continue on. It can seem VERY intimidating at first, but it’s super rewarding too. You grow to understand computers in general, and respect the work that goes into using them. While there may be a ton of different programming languages (my main experience now is with PowerShell), there are needs for all of them. And all of them are just a different flavor of the same thing: telling computers what you want them to do.

That is going to do it for me today! I hope you’ve enjoyed today’s read, and got something valuable out of it. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to me. Now that things are starting to slow down more, I’ll try to make more frequent posts. I appreciate everyone that takes the time to come along with me through this amazing journey. As always, please feel free to share with friends, family, coworkers. I would love nothing more than to be an inspiration to someone else wanting to further themselves professionally.

Until next time! Baba out!

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