Re: Programmers with network engineering skills

[Randy Bush <randy () 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

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.

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.

randy