I originally got into sysops as a side effect of being horribly understaffed at a job years ago due to layoffs,
I had used Linux and FreeBSD at home for several years at that point so it kind of fell into my lap.
Turns out I was a natural, the pragmatism I learned programming lended well to systems and I've been doing it ever since.
Linux, I prefer Ubuntu but CentOS crops up from time to time on my own gear, as I virtualize more the differences become less apparent.
Docker, my current favorite tool, it makes development or testing so much simpler. Docker-Compose eases that even further.
Terraform has taken that same path for infrastructure, now I can enforce consistency between environments, doesn't hurt that it's so straight forward to implement.
Chef, my personal favorite configuration tool, irritating on the single system level but it really shines when you're configuring many boxes.
Kubernetes is the newest tool to my infrastructure toolkit, I've been using it more and more and it really blends well with Chef and Terraform.
Datadog has to be the best managed metrics platform I've seen to date, though I wish they had a BYOI option, run their tooling on my AWS infrastructure, but with a mascot that cute I'll let it slide. And they make great shirts.
Python, which I mention again later, has quickly become my personal favorite language for systems tooling, with v3 becoming standard on most distros now and how simple it is to use in Lambdas we can standardize a lot of how ops does tasks.
On-Prem and I have a long history together, and while I still deal with racks and clip nuts I am glad the physical datacenter is changing.
AWS, my often home on the wire, of the cloud and virtual providers out there, for all their faults and criticism (some earned, most not), AWS has done more to standardize and simplify my job than anything in the last 20 years. I drink the Koolaid, I love AWS.
I've written code for 2/3rds of my life to date, often as a fulltime job or a large portion of my day to day.
I grew up doing C, pedantic and tedious, but fast and small, it was the best thing going at the time.
I still break it out from time to time as needed but I'm glad I moved on from it as my daily driver.
I shortly afterwards moved on to C++.
HTML and Javascript when Netscape was the new hotness.
Started using PHP on a version number that is shameful to say these days.
VB6 back when that meant something.
Java back when Microsoft wanted to ship it with Windows.
Objective C I picked up back when iOS was on v4, when Apple had NO API consistency between versions.
Python and Ruby and newer to my toolbox and were learned originally because of their prevelance in devops and systems tooling programming,
but I've grown to like Python as a web development language.
This site for example being Flask based.
C# is newest to the toolbox and mostly a maintenance language for me, I support some tooling written in C# and add on new functionality as needed.
Not my favorite language since I'm generally not in the Windows world but functional enough for what I use it for.
Now I'm generally revising my Javascript knowledge with NodeJS, or doing new projects in Python.
Bit of a polymath, I have a diverse spread of interests and hobbies and enjoy learning for the sake of learning.
I'm a life long camper, grew up regularly occupying a tent in the California Sierra Nevadas.
I enjoy fishing, cooking, woodworking, reading (mostly non-fiction), and programming.
I'm a pen & paper guy, usually the GM. Pathfinder or Starfinder are the normal ones we play but I do love Rifts when I have the chance.
I do play my share of videogames, currently Fallout4 and Subnautica, with some Infamous Second Son and GTA5 thrown in for wanton openworld destruction.
I'm a Pro Wrestling fan, yes it is staged, no I don't care.