[150591] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Programmers with network engineering skills
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Daniel Schauenberg)
Mon Feb 27 22:10:30 2012
From: Daniel Schauenberg <d@unwiredcouch.com>
In-Reply-To: <m24nubu261.wl%randy@psg.com>
Date: Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:09:17 -0500
To: Randy Bush <randy@psg.com>
Cc: North American Network Operators' Group <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
> a real programmer can be productive in networking tools in a matter of =
a
> month or two. i have seen it multiple times.
>=20
> 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.=
