Believe it or not, I figured out how to get one of these things open! All by myself too, sort of. I’ve been trouble-shooting for the last 30 or 40 minutes, pretty sure I was just using the wrong command for what I was trying to do, but we’re here, I got the file open, that’s what matters.
So, here we are, writing a blog post, getting all introspective and stuff. How have I changed in the last month or two? Well, I guess I will start off by saying that I have always had a lot of hobbies. I love trying new things and developing new skills, and I especially love learning. However, this has started to become a double edged sword as I’ve gotten older. I really don’t have the time anymore to engage in any of my hobbies frequently enough to dive any deeper, learn any more, or get any better. I love playing guitar, for example, but I’m lucky if I’ve got it in me I’ll pick it up and practice for maybe 20-30 minutes once a week. That is hardly enough for me to even mantain the skills I acquired when I had more time. I wish I could just do my hobbies full time, but I’m sure everybody wishes that.
My point is, Computer science and programming has always been a passive interest of mine. I’ve never really given it the time necessary to develop any skills, but it’s something I find incredibly interesting. The first time I got the oppurtunity to dive a little deeper was when I was taking a few online classes during the COVID lockdowns at a community college. Unfortunately the lockdown rocked my mental health pretty good, and so I didn’t retain much of anything. I don’t think I even passed the class. I did take a game design class which involved doing some work in Unity, which was super fun, but I didn’t get too much further in that one either.
So, until taking this class, my interest in computer science was only able to manifest itself in the odd youtube video I’d watch about making DOOM run on an array of lemons, or creating a semi-functional version of Microsoft Paint in Minecraft. All I’d learned from my brush with actually engaging in computer science was that I’d definitely need to dedicate more time than I had been able if I stood any chance of understanding and retaining any of it.
After the first few weeks of this class I was already hooked. Getting the command line open for the first time, making directories and all that, boy it felt neat! Unfortunately after missing several weeks of this semester due to illness, I found myself pretty behind, and I’m still playing catch up. Hell, this blog post is already gonna be at least 3 days late, assuming I manage to finish it today. I still feel like I don’t know what I’m doing, but then again, I did manage to open this file. Pretty sure I even did it correctly, so I must be doing something right, right?
So, where am I going from here? Well for one, I’d love to catch up with the rest of the class. It feels like for every step I take forward, everyone else is taking two. I’m sure most of the class is struggling in their own way, this kind of material isn’t easy, but that two and a half weeks of class I missed certainly didn’t help me, that’s for sure.