100 Days of Nautobot

Let’s face it—network automation is hard. Let me repeat that: network automation is hard. But here’s the good news: it doesn’t have to stay that way. As someone who’s faced these challenges daily, I understand the hurdles and, more importantly, how to overcome them.

Often when I talk to my guests on the podcast, they tell me how they chose network engineering as a career because it is one of the few technology fields that does not need to deal with programming. Many network engineers choose this field to avoid programming, only to find that automation demands coding knowledge in Python, Ansible, Docker, and more. It’s like trying to catch up with disciplines that had a head start—all while managing the complexities of evolving networks. Network automation has its roots in coding and systems engineering. We network engineers are playing catch-up to other disciplines as they have a head start in Python, Ansible, Docker, and source control.

Overcoming Common Hurdles in Network Automation 

Of course, every engineer’s journey is unique, but here are three common roadblocks to mastering network automation:

1. Limited access to lab environment: Network equipment is expensive and hard to maintain, often forcing engineers to experiment on production networks—an inherently risky approach. While virtualization can help, it comes with its own challenges, such as knowledge gaps and limited feature parity. 

2. Analysis paralysis: The endless choices—Python or Go? Ansible or Terraform?—make it hard to know where to begin. Add to that the constantly evolving landscape of frameworks, and it’s easy to feel stuck before even starting.

3. Lack of motivation: As if the other challenges were not enough, we still need to find our motivation to learn network automation. We are proud network engineers who are good at our jobs. It does not feel good to be stuck in a seemingly easy ‘hello world’ Python script, nor is it fun to read through seemingly endless documentation and online forums to search for the one piece of information that we need. 

I get it, and I want to help. While going through my CCIE training, one of the things that helped the most was establishing a study habit of showing up every day, even when I did not feel like it. While trying to learn Python, I made the most progress when I joined the “100 Days of Python” challenge hosted by the Talk Python To Me training.

These projects helped me establish the rhythm and exercise the mental muscle needed to master complex topics.

What is the 100 Days of Nautobot Challenge? 

At Network to Code, we’ve created the “100 Days of Nautobot” challenge to simplify your automation learning journey and make it both effective and enjoyable.

Here is how the “100 Days of Nautobot” challenge addresses the learning challenges we mentioned:  

1. Free and self-directed labs: The challenges use the free credits GitHub gave for codespace. The lab can be launched on the learner’s schedule with a pre-built environment to keep the scaffolding and busywork to a minimum. 

2. Focused and relevant: The content is carefully curated to ensure the process is relevant and progressive in level of difficulty. It is also based on our years of experience working with customers to solve real-world network automation problems; so the exercises are relevant to you, the learner. 

3. Community-based: Studies have shown that we are more motivated when we learn as a group, so we have running buddies that keep us accountable. It is fun to learn with others and keeps us motivated to return each day. The challenges also provide a common ground, so we can simply point to “step 2” of the “Day 10 challenge” instead of spending the first paragraph explaining the context. 

Benefits of Joining the Challenge

Joining the challenge offers several benefits that go beyond just learning Nautobot:

1. Learn how to learn: Learning is a skill that needs to be practiced. We can learn by breaking big projects into small, achievable tasks while gaining confidence and having small wins. We hope that by the end of the challenge you have obtained enough experience to tackle other topics.  

2. Develop discipline: Build the self-discipline to commit to daily learning and create lasting habits. It is by no means easy to stick to a 100-day schedule, but we hope the challenge can help you with consistent self-control in setting up a time to study and establish a structured effort toward learning. 

3. Showcase your skills: Complete portfolio-worthy projects to demonstrate your expertise in network automation. By the end of the challenges, you will be able to confidently demonstrate your areas of knowledge and speak about them. 

How to Get Started

I’m thrilled to invite you to join the “100 Days of Nautobot” challenge. Learn at your own pace, collaborate with a community of like-minded engineers, and master the skills needed to succeed in today’s automation-driven world.

Sign up today to start your journey: https://go.networktocode.com/100-days-of-nautobot. 

Got questions? Visit our Slack channel at https://slack.networktocode.com/. 

See you on Day 1!