Reddit mentions of Puppet Cookbook - Third Edition

Working at a company that owns millions of dollars in private cloud infrastructure, I can tell you now systems engineers are gunna be working there for a long time.

Why learn strait programming though? Your skills are far more relevant and applicable to swapping over to a dev ops role.

Why not learn ansible, puppet, or chef? Pair that with learning how to stand up a hashi-corp/kubernetes/docker style scheduler/service-discovery/deploy framework from the ground up, and you'll be well on your way to owning the dev ops role.

Pair that with learning how to use software like logstash and kibana, get more familiar with a scripting language like python or javascript for quick and dirt automation, get familiar with any kind of deploy pipelines (github/jenkins/ocotopus, that kinda thing whatever you're feeling).

You could probably start at a more senior dev ops role, honestly, than having to relearn a career as a programmer.

https://learn.puppet.com/

This is a good place to start with puppet. https://www.amazon.com/Puppet-Cookbook-Third-Thomas-Uphill/dp/1784394882/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1487416890&sr=1-1&keywords=puppet+cookbook Here's a book I recommend if that's more your style.

https://learnpythonthehardway.org/

I personally feel this is the most "complete" experience for learning python online.