Welcome to the new age of network engineering. When I first started working as a network engineer 18 years ago, at the turn of the millennium, the role was distinctly different than other technical roles. Network engineers mainly possessed domain-specific knowledge to manage and operate local and wide area networks, while occasionally crossing over to systems administration, but there was no expectation to write code or understand programming concepts. This is no longer the case. Over the years, the DevOps and Software-Defined Networking (SDN) movement, among other factors, have significantly blurred the lines between network engineers, systems engineers, and developers.
The fact that you have picked ...