Network engineers have a lot to learn from the software world

"What will be good for your career and the companies you work for is getting a clear understanding of what you are trying to build and finding ways to integrate everything," said Truman Boyes, CTO and head of networks at Bloomberg. This may involve learning some Python, as well as other languages ​​and tools, but only if they suit the job at hand, he considers.

Network engineers have a lot to learn from the software world and not just how to write code, warns Robert McCarthy, senior manager of digital transformation at Ernst & Young. "But I don't think they need to understand programming as much as they need to understand good programming practices," he said.

He cites interactive syntax checking, component testing and eliminating redundancies, with code writing that can be used many times. It's time to adopt code review standards and practices, Cheriton (Stanford) said.

“All of this is part of the standards of careful software engineering and not necessarily of what we see in practice in network operations”, he points out. Leaving automations in the middle, with the software performing network functions, but without those programming principles, has already hurt some companies, he guarantees.

"They got a lot of Perl scripts, which everyone in the company depends on, but nobody understands, because the professional who wrote them left for a job in Italy."

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