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How I got into programming and Linux

2014 and 2015

My dad is programmer and I alway wanted to be one too. But I wasn't patient. I wanted to be a programmer right away without any work. In 2014 I started learning Java from the Czech website called ITnetwork.cz. As I said, I wasn't patient. Everything I did was copying a code snipets from the courses and trying to compile successfully without thinkig or reading the texts. As I'm sure you can guess, it didn't really work. This way I finished the course. Of course, after reading the whole course, I didn't know anything at all.

But the year 2015 chanded everything. I got a book about Scratch for my 9th birthday and I was very interested in it. I was programming in Scratch almost every day. I didn't stop until a year and a half later, when I started studying for the high school entrance exam. Then in high school I didn't do programming for a long time. I was just learning HTML and CSS.

The big year 2020

The year 2020 was amazing. A lot happened in this pandemic-tainted year. At the beginning of this year I didn't go to school due to illness and I was bored. So I thought I might give programming a second chance and I started learning Java again. I read all the lessons carefully and everything miraculously worked. I was really happy and it motivated me so much that I learned a lot of things in that year and even switched to Linux.

In the spring, when I was reading something on the internet, I read about Linux. Dad told me more about it (he is still on Windows, but he use Linux server at the work) and I was really excited. I started looking for materials and figuring out how to install Linux Mint.

In September I was done and I decided to delete Windows and go to Mint. I lasted almost a year with Mint, in May 2021 I switched to Fedora. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Another nice year 2021

Over time, I became interested in the GTK apps and I wanted to know how are they made. Because the only language I knew was Java, I was looking for how to use GTK with Java. But I came across something more interesting, Vala language.

Vala had a similar syntax to Java, so I started learning it. Gradually, I started to get into it. I started to love GTK. I even decided to switch to GNOME because of GTK.

I didn't want Ubuntu besause of its modifications. I wanted pure GNOME. I was familiar with APT, so I was searching for some Debian based distro with GNOME and I found Pop!_OS. Unfortunately, before I could switch to Pop!_OS, they announced that they will now use their own DE called Cosmic instead of GNOME.

So in May I decided to switch to Fedora. It wasn't based on APT, but I figured I'd at least learn something new. I also started learning JavaScript and Python on Fedora.

Beginning of 2022

At the end of January I decided to switch to Arch Linux. I became interested in the rolling release and do-it-yourself system.

So this post I am writing from Arch Linux with GNOME 41.

[Edit March 23, 2022] switching back to Fedora

After the new GNOME release I really wanted to try it. So I took advantage of being on a rolling release distribution and I updated my system right away. After the update I restarted my computer, but it didn't boot up again.

I knew that this can happen with Arch Linux and that there are tutorials on how to fix it. But I decided to come back from Arch to Fedora. The system do-it-yourself, which I liked before, gradually became quite annoying.

So I would update the last paragraph from the last chapter:

This post I am updating from Fedora 36 with GNOME 42. 🙂️