Network engineers for the last twenty years have created networks from composable logical constructs, which result in a network of some structure.

For the last five or six years, I’ve not really done any networking and have focussed on software, automation and the mechanisation of processes so that they may be manifested as network driving workflows.

Workflows vary from seriously simple to notoriously complex and as humans, we might not even consciously observe the subtleties of what a workflow comprises of.

JSNAPY is an open source tool released by Juniper Networks circa 2015 that is the Python version of the Juniper Snapshot Administrator.

There is still an ongoing debate over the need for network engineers to pick up some software skills.

When it comes to expressing intent in automation workflows, there is validation in both using a task or workflow engine and also knocking it together using scripting in some language.