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