My First Steps in a Tough World (SRE/DevOps)

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

Hi, my name is Iriome. You probably don’t know me (totally normal), but a month ago I decided to start my journey in this world as a SRE/DevOps Engineer—and WOW, I’m both shocked and a bit scared by the sheer amount of things any programmer, and especially a good SRE/DevOps Engineer, needs to know.

But before anything else, I’ll start from the very beginning… obviously.

Early Programming Experience

I actually started programming 7 years ago, back when I was 11, but it was completely different. I was working with Unreal Engine blueprints, so I never really cared about writing code line by line.

Then one day, thanks to my brother who is studying ASIR, I tried Python with him and I loved it immediately. I got so hooked that I started exploring tutorials, projects, and everything I could find about Python.

Discovering Python and AI

Soon, I realized… AI was everywhere. At first, it was overwhelming and honestly a bit discouraging. But I decided to keep going, armed with data and determination to become a programmer no matter what.

Eventually, I discovered what I really wanted: to automate, orchestrate, and monitor systems. Since there are hardly any junior MLOps positions, I decided to start in SRE/DevOps and pivot to MLOps later.

Diving Deeper

Once I knew my path, I dived in fully. I started coding in Python almost every day, building mini projects and scripts to practice. Soon, I realized that understanding Linux was essential for real‑world systems. So, I installed WSL2, learned my way around the Linux terminal, got comfortable with basic Bash commands, and started experimenting.

First SRE/DevOps Project

This led me to create my first SRE/DevOps project: a small monitoring system that checks CPU, memory, and disk usage, logs the data, and even sends notifications. It was far from perfect, but it was my first taste of building something practical, combining coding, Linux skills, and system monitoring. And honestly? I was hooked.

Reflections and Next Steps

Looking back, these first steps were full of uncertainty, excitement, and a lot of trial and error. But they taught me one thing: persistence and curiosity are more important than knowing everything from the start.

In the next post, I’ll dive into the technical side of my first project, what problems I faced, how I structured it, and what lessons I learned while building a production‑grade monitoring system. Stay tuned and thanks for reading!