Re: Programmers with network engineering skills

[Daniel Schauenberg <d () unwiredcouch com>]

> a real programmer can be productive in networking tools in a matter of a
> month or two.  i have seen it multiple times.
>
> a networker can become a useful real progammer in a year or three.

Thank you! I always wonder when someone distinguishes between a networker and a programmer as if they came from 
completely different worlds. I find these fields to be highly related. They are algorithmic at the core and you need a 
good understanding of architecture and design to successfully make the concepts work. If you have ever tried to find a 
bug in a badly structured network, you should be able to understand that implementing all of your application's use 
cases in one module is not a good idea. After implementing a good serialization scheme for your class data, network 
protocols are not that strange anymore (I know I'm exaggerating on simple examples here, but I hope the idea comes 
across).

My point is, if someone has a good understanding of applying architectural patterns to a problem and isolating error 
causes while debugging, it shouldn't matter if he wrote mostly software the last years or if she administered a large 
scale network. A good sysadmin can learn to write software and a good programmer can learn to love the datacenter.