RE: Programmers with network engineering skills

["Justin M. Streiner" <streiner () cluebyfour org>]

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