I was just a person with no goal, no hobby, no... anything. I was trying to prove to myself and others that I was great, or successful, in some way. I'd work out, chasing the dream body. I'd try to change my mindset—whatever that meant—following all those useless self-improvement tips. Hell, I even started learning Russian because I saw achievement in every new word.
I learned everything through social media. That was my only source (damn data plan limits). But I needed the internet—I'd discovered there was treasure there, a whole life waiting online.
And fate actually delivered.
I got internet access (through... let's say indirect, not-quite-ethical means). It felt like doors opening to a new world. What had been locked inside me—curiosity, the urge to explore—suddenly broke free.
The first thing that caught my attention, the thing I'd always wondered about: websites. What were they? How did these magical things work?
The catch? I didn't even have a computer. The last time I'd touched one was around this same period—the school computer, for an exam project. A stupid Python program that took two numbers and added or multiplied them.
I knew it was nonsense, ridiculous, like I was being played for a fool.
But here's the thing: this "stupid" stuff was impossibly difficult for the vast majority—if not all—of my classmates. Some of them were literally failing this joke of a "subject" (I'm embarrassed to even call it a subject, given how little it taught).
Want to know the best lesson we learned?
How to turn the computer on and off.
Literally.
Throughout my entire education, all school taught us was how to type in Microsoft Word, enter some numbers in Excel, and a few Python "basics" (jokes)— print, assigning variables, declaring variables, conditions. That's it.
But when I touched that computer and clicked "create a program"... I felt alive for the first time. Actually enjoying something physical, beyond quick dopamine hits and sleep.
I immediately remembered my teacher's words during a conversation about choosing a specialty after graduation. She'd said, "Why not decide based on your favorite subject?"
I told her I didn't really like any subject, despite outperforming 90% of my peers. Math was the only one I actually enjoyed. Sometimes English. Computer science back then was just theory, taught in French—a language I hated. What kind of nonsense was that?
But when I tried actual programming on an actual computer, I knew: This is it. This is what I wanted.
So I searched YouTube for programming videos. Still new to all this. Watched some guys explaining different programming fields. I picked web dev. Why? Because I was genuinely curious about the web. I watched people's opinions on the field and thought it looked easy at first—just HTML, CSS, JS. Something called a "framework" that I didn't understand, figured it was like a light library or something. Backend? I thought it'd be fun—just write code, sit in the dark like a hacker, you know...
Because of the long, stupid school year, I could only code during breaks. During school days, I'd just watch programming videos or learn theory.
I aspired to be a full-stack developer and thought it'd be easy. "People who specialize are idiots," I thought. Until I saw how complex the field actually was and understood why people specialize.
But I kept going.
My learning was fast—I simply got these things. HTML, CSS, JS posed zero obstacles. The real wall was React, my first framework. That's when I felt truly constrained. That's when I started heavily using my most important tool: Termux.
But even then, development was hell. Dozens of packages, hundreds of megabytes. You might think that's normal, but for someone on a phone with stolen, slow internet? Pure hell.
I'd open the code editor, write code, open Termux to run the server and commit to git, then open the browser. When I'd return to the editor, it had reloaded and closed. Same with Termux. Same with the browser. Like coding at the bottom of the ocean, chained down.
This coincided with school starting again, right when I'd learned the MERN stack, Git/GitHub, Vercel, Netlify, and the rest. I paused programming temporarily.
I asked myself: Is this really my field?
I thought and followed my curiosity, which always leads me to understand things deeper. What if I went... lower? Systems programming, Operating Systems, cli, how things actually work, this low-level stuff.
Ideas about entering this field started brewing—it's deep, perfect for satisfying intellectual curiosity. It took me months to actually take the first step and temporarily leave web dev behind.
Now I've learned C basics and other things: Linux distros, command line, Linux file structure, ARM64 assembly (because phone). I even installed Arch Linux on my phone through Termux using proot-distro! Customized everything—terminal, prompt, Neovim editor—all thanks to the repos. I can stay in the terminal all day !.
Am I crazy? I don't know!
I "borrowed" internet again (I mean, got internet), created a completely new GitHub account after losing my old one—which I'd also abandoned because it was embarrassing, full of boring projects like todo lists, tic-tac-toe, simple apps with very simple backends.
Now I'm motivated to fill this repository. To build projects that solve real problems for real people. Real-world tools. I won't build stupid, repetitive portfolio projects just for a job. Real projects. Because I also don't like following the herd.
And here we are—the point where I'm writing this file.
Thanks for reading. I'll continue documenting my journey below this section...
Excerpted all from my old github file