I wanted to share a really well written blog post that is based on a presentation about the evolution of Network Programmability. One of the things I tend to like about a strong presentation is that it covers enough history and current context to make the content relevant to its audience. The writer of this article does that amazingly well. I’m glad to share it since I agree with much of what he said and it dovetails with my thinking on the subject.

Here are some of the points summarized: - We need a new model. We need to put into place a methodology that allows us to interact with the network in the same way that we design it. - Purchasing products or building solutions that do the [high level abstractions], without a mastery of [fundamental technologies],.. will inevitably result in failure. - At scale, repetitive tasks are the not-so-silent killer…. These repetitive tasks tend to occupy a lot of time, mostly for those whose time is really valuable… These tasks are prime candidates for automation. - Some kind of centralization will win out. - No, you do NOT need to become a programmer, but you can if you truly want to. - “The truth is that we don’t need all network engineers to learn code. We need network engineers to solve networking problems. We also need a smaller subset of these folks to tackle the problems in existing tool sets and getting the networking discipline to understand how to improve processes for the better.”