Hello everyone and I hope you are doing fine during this time where we all fighting to get our freedom and life back from the side effects that was caused by the COVID-19 events.
Today my post is about something I was doing recently which we all need to move forward and accept it as a vital part of our career development. which is learning python for network engineers.
as you all know, this has became a part from the blueprints and practical day to day work requirements to understand and use programmability of the networks.
Many programming languages exist but myself and many other network engineers if not 99% of us love working with Python. one of the reasons are:
1. Easy to learn and understand Python.
2. Network supporting libraries availability.
3.On systems like Linux and Mac OS Python comes preinstalled.
Okay, so since I knew that it was a must to start learning programming, I was in the phase of accepting this new challenge to simply reason which was (I HATED Programming) and of course this was due to learning in University and the languages we used to learn (Pascal back then). which did not make any sense to me and could not progress in it at all.
But after a while, I started pushing myself to learn and the challenge was (where to start?).
Of course learning ability and learning ways are different from one person to another, some people like to start reading on oppose to learn from a video, others are video learn first then book.
I'm latter type of people, so I started looking for video series that can help me learn python and especially network engineers type of learning python.
So my first go to option was (Udemy.Com) where I searched and found David Bombal's training series.(you can find lots of videos on YouTube as well)
and it was really good purchase compared to the price and the material quality.
Started watching the videos at first which all was about 2-5 minutes long videos, which you think "that is short video!" but try again when you hate something and try to watch it for a minute.
As soon as David started explaining the need for learning programming language and it's benefits to us as network engineers, I started to realize how important it is and how important to learn it.
Basically you can make your daily tasks, the boring type of tasks that require you to login all devices one by one and collect simple information from each device an easy task and can be done in few seconds.
watching when you run a code to do it's magic in one click is amazing, thinking back about when I was still studying and preparing for my CCIE lab exam, and remembering time inside exam to use NotePad to make configuring devices fast and easy. learning python is sure an easy task to do giving it's value to help you configure hundreds of devices in no time.(Don't you think using notepad is kind of programmability?)
I remember reactions from people here and there saying that I can't learn python and I can't be programmer and also programmers are going to take our jobs, or saying I'm too old to learn Python (which unfortunately some were a role models to network engineers from all over the world).
This does not make any sense and far beyond truth, no programmer is going to replace network engineer because programmers still don't know what is the commands that a network device can understand or which protocol to use and where and why!
In addition, Information technology in all of it's aspects and sections continue to develop everyday and we must keep ourselves up to date when it comes to knowledge, BTW this applies to everything around us because every profession requires updates, this is normal and we have to accept it!
This is kind of nonsense and you as a network engineer must not fall into this, go and seek knowledge
by yourself, explore the subjects before deciding what is good or bad of hard or easy. you must be able to adapt new changes and continue learning.
I have finished the training and going beyond this training to finish a book that I bought from CiscoPress.com which is Cisco DEVASC Official Certification Guide. which I will be reading cover to cover now and practice everything in it, this is my next certification goal.
If you don't know what is Cisco DEVASC then go to the following link:
My last advise to you is to go ahead and start your python learning, you will see the relief you will get after you start using the codes you write. seeing progress through your study is amazing as long as you are doing it the right way, Python and any other programming language is to practice while studying and make mistakes because you will learn the most from your mistakes.
In my next posts, I will be sharing my progress and some of the codes that I practiced on while studying.
So here are links to my study resources in my DEVNET journey:
1. David Bombal's video series
2. Cisco OCG DEVASC https://www.ciscopress.com/store/cisco-certified-devnet-associate-devasc-200-901-official-9780136642961
3. Network Programmability and automation fundamentals https://www.ciscopress.com/store/network-programmability-and-automation-fundamentals-9781587145148
4. Cisco Learning Network DEVNET Study group https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/s/topic/0TO3i0000008jY5GAI/devnet-certifications-community
5. Cisco DEVNET Courses are also available https://developer.cisco.com
6. Video Course from Cisco Devnet https://developer.cisco.com/video/net-prog-basics/
I hope you find my post useful and motivating!
Samer R. Saleem
