I taught programming to a group of teenagers with no previous programming experience. I chose Common Lisp, using Conrad Barski's 'Land of Lisp' as the text. My objective was not to teach a particular language, but to teach HOW to program. The big advantage to Lisp is that there's no syntax, after all, everything's a list. I've also taught C++, Perl, and JavaScript, and in my judgement, those teenagers made mare progress in Lisp than college age kids did with the more traditional languages. At the end of the course, they were successfully writing real programs, which is more than my college students ever did.

I wore a uniform for two years, consisting of a white shirt with the company logo and khaki trousers, and thought it was a good idea. My department was held in high regard as a result of the services it performed, and I gained instant credibility as a result of my visual identification with the department. Wasn't a help desk, but as an instructor in a technical college. Still, if the department is respected, the members will be as well.

First, read "Advanced Unix Programming" by Marc J. Rochkind. This is perhaps THE one source book for learning to program Unix. Then, become proficient in C. C was developed to write Unix, and Unix was written in C. After that, read the source. You can't write for any application (OSes included) until you can read the source ... which in this case is in C.