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July 01, 2003
Seeking simplicity
During a lunch conversation today, I realized one of the difficulties in driving simplicity in to what we do: it's not obvious how things we already do, could be done much more simply. In fact, if we happen to even think about doing things simpler, we'll be inclined to disbelieve they can be done simpler.
With my background in programming, I pretty regularly use programming to quickly automate or otherwise process some network engineer task I'm working on. I think network engineers can achieve a 10-20% (or more, depending on their job) efficiency increase by knowing how to program.
But programming can get me into trouble. My tendency is to hack together a quick script for anything I want to do or track, rather than trying to retrofit a network management tool to do the job. I can program what I need in a couple of hours, much faster than a sales meeting or technical support call with the tools vendors. However, since this doesn't fit into the more "sanctioned" and supported network management tools, my work is usually considered maverick.
The Power of Simplicity talks about simplicity being erroneously equated with simplistic, or stupidity. I think in this case, I am so conditioned to think that network management requires expensive, complex software, that even I thought my own approach was inadequate.
Over lunch, I realized that the way I like to build tools is one of the simplest ways to manage a network, and is worth considering as a better way than with a bunch of over-engineered management tools. I'm not saying that it's always better, just that it's worth considering, and not dismissing out-of-hand. I realized that one of the simplest, most scalable and possibly least-expensive and most-successful network instrumentation methods was just so simple, I was overlooking it right in front of my face.
Posted by pete at July 1, 2003 10:16 PM
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