Programmers with network engineering skills

Doug Barton dougb at dougbarton.us
Mon Feb 27 22:31:13 UTC 2012


On 2/27/2012 2:23 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Owen DeLong" <owen at delong.com>
> 
>> I think you're more likely to find a network engineer with (possibly
>> limited) programming skills.
>>
>> That's certainly where I would categorize myself.
> 
> And you're the first I've seen suggest, or even imply, that going that
> direction instead might be more fruitful; seemed to me that the skills
> necessary to make a decent network engineer would support learning 
> programming better than the other way round -- though in fact I personally
> did it the other way.

I think it depends on what level of "coding" you're talking about. If
you want someone that can whip up a few scripts to easily manage routine
tasks, then sure, network guy -> "coder" is usually a safe and easy path.

OTOH, if you're talking professional application developer working on a
project with more than one moving part, and/or more than one person on
the team, you really need someone who thinks like a developer, and can
be trained to understand network concepts.

.... and yes, the latter is the path that I've taken, so I have a
built-in bias.


Doug

-- 

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