Installing Arch is much closer to system administration than programming - they may be related somewhat and attractive to similar people; but you can be a quite successful programmer and barely be able to install Ubuntu.
I know people who have written kernel-level Linux drivers who have difficulty upgrading macOS. They're separate skillsets.
I was going to say, I know a lot of programmers, maybe even most, who avoid Linux like the plague because they don't want to waste cognitive cycles on fixing their broken machines. I have found myself in this same place after a solid 12 years or so of Linux use for pretty much everything, home, work, etc. I honestly kinda want to get back into it, but there are other priorities. As long as I have access to some kind of unix-y command line from somewhere I'm good.
Thanks for sharing. I'm a bit surprised about the second paragraph but then I realize it is indeed two skillsets.
I think I'm split between career growth and hobby. My career is much closer to a sys admin/devops than a low level programmer, but my hobby probably is closer to the later. Of course it could be just my fancy about low level programming that fascinates me as after all I have never done any low level programming except some entry level MCU programming.
>I'm a bit surprised about the second paragraph but then I realize it is indeed two skillsets.
I started out my career on the sysadmin side of things before becoming a developer and that doesn't surprise me at all. Most devs I work with have little to no understanding of things like file permissions, how networking works beyond making HTTP calls with $SomeRequestLibrary in their programming language of choice, or how services/daemons work in Windows/Linux.
I know people who have written kernel-level Linux drivers who have difficulty upgrading macOS. They're separate skillsets.