Learn to Code with AI

If you’re a network engineer who’s tried to learn Python and struggled, you’re not alone.

Erika Dietrick returns to share Level 1 of a free course she created that is a missing link for a lot of fellow “CLI lifers” out there.

Network engineering used to be a job you could do with route/switch fundamentals and strong operational instincts. That was enough to build a great career.

Now? Programming fundamentals are showing up everywhere, even for roles that aren’t “software jobs.” And if you’re not building that foundation, you’re quietly putting yourself at risk in a market that has zero sympathy for “it’s not fair.”

Erika’s Secret Sauce

Erika’s Level 1 course is basically exposure therapy for your brain: learning how to think programmatically, how to reason through problems like a developer, and how to build enough context that you’re not just memorizing syntax.

And that matters, because coding feels weird to network engineers.

Not because network engineers aren’t smart, but because it’s genuinely a different mental model. You’re learning new abstractions, new patterns, and new ways of debugging problems, while still being the person responsible for uptime, escalations, and “why is the app slow?”

That’s a brutal paper route.

Vibe Coding = Outsourcing Competence

A developer using AI as an accelerator knows what “good” code looks like. A beginner using AI as a replacement for understanding foundational concepts is copy/paste roulette.

Here’s a real-world example. The day before we recorded this episode, Andy Lapteff 🛠️💬 tried to pull transcripts from Erika’s YouTube course using a Python script generated by AI.

What should’ve been simple turned into 45 minutes of back-and-forth: broken libraries, outdated APIs, version issues, and the classic AI loop:

“Ah, yes, I see the problem. Now it will work.”

Iterating through code Andy didn’t understand.

It didn’t work.

Repeatedly.

Round and round in an AI gaslighting loop.

That experience made something painfully clear: if you don’t understand the basics, you become dependent on the tool to debug the tool. And that’s not empowerment, it’s outsourcing your competence.

Erika’s stance was blunt: vibe coding isn’t the move for most network engineers, at least not until you have enough foundation to know what you’re looking at.

So where does AI fit in?

Erika isn’t anti-AI. She’s anti-delusion.

Her plan for the free course is a three-level progression:

Level 1: Programmatic thinking + fundamentals – Not a “memorize everything” approach, but more like learning how to reason.
Level 2: Use AI to learn faster (with structure) – This is where she becomes the guide: what to learn, in what order, and how to use AI to fill gaps without getting lost.
Level 3: Generate code responsibly – Use AI for the tedious parts, but keep your brain engaged so you can validate, troubleshoot, and improve what you’re shipping.

And crucially: Level 2 gets more “network engineer practical.”

Because it’s hard to apply coding to networking when you know almost nothing. Once you understand concepts like libraries, data structures, and functions, you can start learning network-focused libraries faster- Netmiko, NAPALM, Nornir, pyATS, vendor SDKs, API patterns, gNMI tooling, and more, without needing a semester-long detour.

“Nobody Cares About Your Feelings”

One of the most honest moments in the conversation was this:

A lot of us want to believe the industry will accommodate us.

That we should be able to keep doing the job the way we’ve always done it, and still be rewarded, even as expectations change.

But the market doesn’t care.

Businesses want efficiency. They want repeatability. They want automation. They want people who can work across layers, not just configure one.

That doesn’t mean you need to become a software engineer. But it does mean you need enough literacy to:

understand what automation is doing
collaborate with devs and platform teams
build (or at least maintain) tools that reduce manual work.

Erika said it best: developers aren’t magical, but the culture around software often acts like coding is reserved for the “gifted.”

She’s trying to burn that down..

Erika’s creator journey (and why “free” still works)

We pivoted to her move from big-corporate life into full-time content creation, and how “free content” isn’t the same as “no business.”

Her content is a funnel:

people learn from her work
they trust her expertise
and that leads to sponsored posts, freelance development, partnerships, and (eventually) paid offerings.

But she’s adamant that beginner education should be accessible. If the goal is to get more people into the skills, the onramp can’t be gated by high-priced courses.