Network Automation with David

Why tool selection matters Picking the wrong tool for network automation rarely shows up as an obvious failure. It shows up six months later, when you’re hitting scale limits, maintaining code nobody else understands, or trying to add a feature the tool was never designed for. This post won’t give you a list of tools to use. It will give you a framework for evaluating them, with some real examples of what goes wrong when that evaluation is skipped.

In the very beginning… Whether you are an administrator, an engineer, or an architect, the moment you are asked to automate the network, you are stepping into a new world. A world full of possibilities, but also challenges. The first question that often comes up is simple: where do I even start? For an administrator dealing with tickets and day-to-day changes, the idea of automation can feel overwhelming. For an engineer, it might immediately become a question of tools and languages. For an architect, it’s about designing a system that can scale, adapt, and remain maintainable over time.