Teach him to use it and send him down the path of one of the most frustrating career paths in existence…
Developer: Hey, I think the network is broken
Network Engineer: Okay, lemme check 30 seconds later nope, looking good, what’s up?
Developer: There’s a network issue, I ran this new code and lost everything.
NE: That’s… not really how the network works…
Dev: I’m a Developer, I know how the network works.
NE: Really…? Do you know how servers work?
Dev: Yes, of course. …
NE: Then why didn’t you look that your code crashed the VM you were using and you need to restart it…
Dev: …so it was a network issue?
NE: …
Dev: to other Devs Hey guys, don’t worry, it was a network issue, but I got them to do their job for once and fix it.
NE: resumes recreational liver destruction
After setting up my own network, and trying to (kinda sorta) do it the right way (multiple SSIDs, vlan segregation, restrictive firewalls for iot, VPN to a VPS, etc.) — I have so much respect for network engineers. First month with my new router, felt like I “broke the Internet” every other day.
Networking has to be the most confusing and tedious IT work I’ve ever done. I still don’t fully understand all the basics of security. But by far the worst part is that troubleshooting can’t be done like normal programming. Network troubleshooting takes forever, and all you get is a working network. Network work feels so dull even I have a hard time seeing my effort.
No kidding. There’s no debugger. You can’t just set a breakpoint and see what’s going on under the hood. It’s more like playing Russian roulette and hoping you don’t bring the whole network down.
It’s messing with the wiring while it’s still hot and there often isn’t a better way to do it.
My 14 yo would be stoked. He’s right into networking tech. Doesn’t really care about Nintendo.
I wish I was into networking at 14, I’d be making more money now. That’s a great start he’s got
Not everything needs to be about making money, just reminding you that that’s pretty vile.
theres a chance that thing cost more than a Nintendo Switch
I would be pissed if I got a 10/100 catalyst switch too.
It’s not Santa’s fault, he’s thousands of years old so he probably had his IT stack built out ages ago and never bothered to consider upgrades so he just assumed that 10/100 was still state of the art!
He’s probably using cloud services, makes sense, why build out infra he’ll have to manage 365 when he basically needs it 2 months a year?
Wonder if he uses Amazon Glacier
