Fair, unfortunately it was a work machine that i needed operational again asap.

Luckily i image my machine monthly, so it was fairly straightforward to roll back.

Generally yes. My exception was the time i accidentally nuked python in it’s entirety…

If it helps, 80% of the work i do when wearing my sysadmin hat is just ensuring that all of our systems are communicating properly.

I did like one semester of computer science, does that count?

Honestly I just google shit until I understand it. Linux has great documention, and where it fails you can just read the source code.

I would argue that the modern smartphone is different, but by no means better. Between the locked down operating systems and the lack of a physical keyboard they are great for consuming media through approved channels, but basically useless if you want to get any work done with them.