Programmers with network engineering skills
Justin M. Streiner
streiner at cluebyfour.org
Sun Mar 4 16:09:15 UTC 2012
On Mon, 27 Feb 2012, Jared Newell wrote:
> I think the difference is that network engineers typically find
> themselves wanting to learn some form of programming to automate routine
> tasks while doing their job as a network engineer. They've actually
> managed to be interested in programming while pursuing a career in
> networking out of necessity.
That pretty much the path that I took. I found a lot of value in
automating tasks, which eventually grew into a configuration backup system
that was used company-wide. I could have deployed one of several
configuration management systems, but I wanted to build one from the
ground up. While the code I wrote wasn't exactly pretty, it worked. No
doubt there was a lot of room to do it better, and one of my long-term
goals was to re-write the whole thing in a language that was better suited
to the task at hand, I ended up moving on to a new gig before that came
to pass.
I still have the code (previous employer was OK with that), and I still
tinker with it from time to time. It taught me a lot more about some of
the nuts-and-bolts aspects of both coding and SNMP that I ever would have
encountered, had I not written that system.
I think I would also add to the wish list for "the perfect candidate" is
some database experience. Sometimes data is much easier to work with in
the SQL world than 'live'.
jms
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