Whenever I come across an error I can't solve, my passion and enjoyment for programming steadily goes downhill as I furiously search Stack Overflow and debug. And just when I'm about to give up, to say "this is the opposite of enjoyable, I'm quitting" I figure out the stupid mistake I made, and the moment of sheer bliss that comes with solving a stubborn issue boosts my passion for coding up even higher then it was before.

And at times like this, I wonder if that majority of time spent staring frustratedly at an error message is actually made worthwhile by the sudden hit of adrenaline that comes from solving the problem.

I imagine myself like a drug addict in that regard. Like a drug addict, I spend most of my time feeling like shit, but that short feeling of happiness makes me put up with the shittiness. Is it really worth it? I subject myself to so much angst, angst that I only keep pushing through because I'm certain I'll figure it out eventually, I'll solve the problem and everything will be okay.

Maybe that means programming isn't truly for me. I'm sure many people actually enjoy the process of overcoming obstacles, but honestly, I don't. The only reason I keep trying to scale that obstacle is because of my memory of the past obstacle, and the feeling I felt as I climbed down the other side, having finally reached the top.

VIM! ViM! vim! Vi Improved! Emacs (Wait ignore that one). What’s this mysterious VIM? Some believe mastering this beast will provide them with untold mastery over the forces of command line editing. Others would just like to know, how you exit the bloody thing. But in essence VIM is essentially a command line text editor at heart and it’s learning curve is so high it’s a circle.

There’s a lot of posts on the inter-webs detailing how to use that cruel mistress that is VIM. But rather then focus on how to be super productive in VIM (because honestly I’ve still not got a clue). This focus on my personal journey, my numerous attempts to use VIM in my day to day work. To eventually being able to call myself a novice.

My VIM journey started in 2010 around the same time I was transiting some of my hobby projects from SVN to GIT. It was around that time, that I attempted to run “git commit” in order to commit some files into one of my repositories.

Notice I didn’t specify the “-m” flag to provide a message. So what happened next. A wild command line editor opened in order for me to specify my message, foolish me assumed this command editor was just like similar editors such as Nano. So much CTRL + C’ing CTRL + Z’ing, CTRL + X’ing and a good measure of Google, I was finally able to exit the thing. Yeah…exit it. At this moment the measure of the complexity of this thing should be kicking in already, but it’s unfair to judge it based on today’s standards of user friendly-ness. It was born in a much simpler time. Before even the mouse graced the realms of the personal computing world.

But anyhow I’ll cut to the chase, for all of you who skipped most of the post to get to this point, it’s “:q!”. That’s the keyboard command to quit…well kinda this will quit the program. But…You know what just go here: The Manual. In-fact that’s probably not going to help either, I recommend reading on :p

My curiosity was peaked. So I went off in search of a way to understand this: VIM thing. It seemed to be pretty awesome, looking at some video’s on YouTube, I could do pretty much what Sublime text could but from the terminal. Imagine ssh’ing into a server and being able to make code edits, with full autocomplete et al. That was the dream, the practice…was something different. So I decided to make the commitment and use VIM for editing one of my existing projects.

So fired the program up and watched the world burn behind me. Ahhh…why can’t I type anything, no matter what I typed nothing seemed to appear on screen. Surely I must be missing something right? Right! After firing up the old Google machine, again it would appear there is this concept known as modes. When VIm starts up it defaults to a mode called “Normal” mode, hitting keys in this mode executes commands. But “Insert” entered by hitting the “i” key allows one to insert text.

Finally I thought I think I understand how this VIM thing works, I can just use “insert” mode to insert text and the arrow keys to move around. Then when I want to execute a command, I just press “Esc” and the command such as the one for saving the file. So there I was happily editing my code using “Insert” mode and the arrow keys, but little did I know that my happiness would be short lived, the arrow keys were soon to be a thorn in my VIM journey.

Join me for part two of this rant in which we learn the untold truth about arrow keys, touch typing and vimrc created from scratch. Until next time..

:q!

Is there something you find genuinely cool and would recommend ? Some webpage, program, OS, library or anything ?

I mean hey. There are SO MANY reaaaally cool things I didn't know until last few months.. Things I'd be so grateful for if I knew them earlier. I'll list some of them and I just know you have few of yours too. Feel free to educate the rest!

Processing - Program so fun to code in + CodingTrain(YTB channel)
Microcorruption.com - so freaking awesome if you wanna learn hacking / assembly (not x86 necessarily)
LiveOverflow - cool hacking channel
Radare - cool cmd Linux disassembler
vim-adventures.com - LEARN VIM (not just how to quit it) LITERALLY by playing a game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
slashdot - stay updated , like really
"BEST-WEBSITES-A-PROGRAMMER-SHOULD-VISIT" - GUYS THIS! Sorry for caps but search this on GitHub and you will fucking die of happiness of how freaking useful links there are and no bullshit to dig through , just pure awesomeness. REALLY
HandBrake - Top media converter without bullshit and bloat stuff in it
Calibre - Best eBook management software capable of literally everything ebooks related. Kindle is a bloated joke compared to this
QubesOS - You know you can have every OS running at once - you have a Linux but are playing win games. Yup. It's there. Free
Computerphile - You all know it, it's just for completeness
Khan Academy - Same
VulnHub - download vulnerable VMs and hack them, or learn by reading writeup on how to do it!
Valgrind - MUST HAVE for C/C++ programmers
Computer Science crash course videos

That's all I can think of from top of my head but hey, there's more to it so definitely add your 2 cents!

Last thing, if nothing, just check the websites on GitHub, that's lifechanger

Looking forward to see some cool links & recommendations!

People, help me out.

(first some abstract thoughts)

I am a final year undergrad yet to take steps in the world and i am trying to figure out what to do with my time, what my end goal and next steps should be.

As of now I think my end goal is "relaxation , peace and happiness of me and my loved ones", and to reach there , i need money.

My younger self chose engineering for a particular reason(that i vaguely remember) and weather it was a right or wrong/illogical decision, i guess i am stuck with it and have to use this only to reach my end goal.
Maybe i am regretting this and want to change. Maybe i am just a lazy ass who is bad in his assigned role of an engineer and is running towards glitter in other fields, whatever it is , i am not going against the decision of my past and accepting my identity as an engineer.
I believe once i am able to achieve my goal( that am still not sure about but overall is a good one from general perspective), i guess i will be satisfied

------------------------------------------------
(enough with the deep stuff)

I want to learn how to "learn" . like i am always conflicted about what to do next once the tutor leaves my hand.

for eg, let's say i goto a site abc.

1. They got 1 course each for android , web dev and ai. I choose the web dev course and give my hardworking attention to it
( At this point my choice is usually based on the fact that <A> i should not be stupid to buy all 3 course even if i have money/desire to buy all of em because riding 2 horses is only going to break my ass and <B> some pseudo stats like whichever got more opportunity, which i "like", etc(Point B is usually useless in the long run i guess) )

2. From what i have experienced, these courses usually have a particular list of topic that they cover and apply them to 1 or 2 projects. For eg, say that my web dev course taught me 20 something concepts of basic html/css/js/server and the instructor applied it to blog website

BUT WHAT IS NEXT ?

2.1.
>> Should I make more projects using only those particular list of concepts?
I usually have a ton of ideas that i want to implement now that i know how to build a blog site.
say i got a similar idea to make say url shortner. I start with full enthusiasm but in the middle way there is some new thing that i don't know and when i search the internet, i realize that there are 5 ways to implement such concept, making me wander off towards a whole list of concepts that were not covered in my original 20 concept course. This makes the choice 2. 2

2.2
>> Should I just leave everything , go to docs and start learning concepts from the scratch ??
Usually when i start a project, i soon realize that the original 20 concepts were just the tip of iceberg and there are a ton of things one should know, like how os works, how a particular component interacts with another, how the language is working, how the compiler is executing, etc .
At that point i feel like tearing all my notes away, and learning every associated thing from the scratch. No matter how much my project suffers, i want to know how the things are working from the bottom , like how the requests are being mad, how the routes are working, etc which might not even be relevent for the project.

Why i want to follow approach 2? because of the Goal from abstract thoughts. in theory, having deep knowledge is going to clear my interview thereby getting me a good job.
I will get good money, make projects faster and that will be a happily ever after story.

But in practical this approach is bringing me losses and confusion. every layer of a particular thing i uncover, turns out there is another layer below that. The learning never stops. Plus my original project remained incomplete.

What is your opinon, how do you figure out what to do next?

I finally have some motivation to write some personal code... on an existing project.

(Work has been too hectic the last few months so don't want to do anymore at home...)

Anyway... I noticed that my Prime Video Tracker app doesn't pick up some of the new Movies now available on Prime, so I did some fixing.

Good News (GN): The search URL is actually static so can goto the same URL for the same search results
GN: The program can filter the movies by a Minimum # of Ratings they have (currently set to 100... use to be 10)

Bad News (BN): The number of movies in the search results is over 5000 (used to be 100-200) so even with this filter, a lot get returned.

GN: the traversal is fully automated

BN: Need to manually look at the descriptions of each and add them the Watchlist

BN: I now have 200 movies on my Watchlist and still going...

So now I have another "Infinite list". Existing ones:
-TED Talks
-NLegs
-Blinkist Read List
-Comics (sort of, I have a huge backlog for Cyanide and Happiness)
-Photos that need "post-processing"

I'm pretty sure I'm forgetting some others...