Programmers with network engineering skills

Mon Mar 5 20:32:44 UTC 2012

2012/3/2 Randy Bush <randy at psg.com>

> >>> In my experience the path of least resistance is to get a junior
> >>> network engineer and mentor he/she into improving his/hers programming
> >>> skills than go the other way around.
> >>
> >> and then the organization pays forever to maintain the crap code while
> >> the kiddie learned to program.  right.  brilliant.
> >
> > +1 Although, I've seen the opposite where a brilliant developer writes
> > wonderful code, leaves and you are left with a similarly difficult
> > situation since there are no more programmers in the department and no
> > brilliant developers willing to do programming that requires in depth
> > knowledge of networking.
>
> that was not a brilliant developer.  that was a clever developer.
>
>    Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.
>    Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are,
>    by definition, not smart enough to debug it.  -- Brian W. Kernighan
>
>
It's not so much that the code was too clever to troubleshoot, just that we
were fresh out of developers.

> and, if the department was not willing to invest in long-term software
> capability, then they were foolish to enter the game in the first place.
>

If I said this was the first time I saw a large corporation do something
foolish I'd be lying...  I was consulting on a project that created a need
to modify the existing code.  I probably could have tackled it but I have a
day job and didn't want to become the "house developer".  Watching people
try to explain to upper management why their band of merry router jockeys
should have a developer was interesting.  Sometimes it comes down to
convincing the business side to invest time and money into creating the
development position for code that hasn't been touched in years..  If you
just look at the technical bits, the need is usually obvious.

>
> go find an open-source solution or buy commercial.  and if none fit your
> needs, and you are not willing to invest in softdev, then you have a
> problem in your business model.
>

Agreed... but I was consulting.  My business model was satisfied when I
walked through the door.  I'm not saying there shouldn't be developers on a
team of network engineers, it's was just interesting to see what happens
when the one-eye'd man leaves.