Dear Fedi friends,The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction
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@elena I mean as far as programming goes, I'd recommend starting to learn with C
It will teach you HOW things work under the hood, and once you're good with that, you can move out to other languages. The difficulty curve can be steep depending on the person. But it's imho the best way to start.
If you want to jump into things faster, python is widely used to introduce kids to programming these days.
As for your goals, I don't think they are directly related to programming. Those are more in the domain of a sysadmin
@elena To learn being comfortable with CLI in linux, you could try a manual install of linux. Arch Linux used to require it and had a really solid wiki.
If you do want to try this I'd recommend doing this in a VM you will miss things the first two/three tries, and a VM is really nice for practice.
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@samuel hahaha yes in my learning journey I've seen so many memes about arch linux, LOL. Sadly all my old computers are Macs
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@elena I'd tend to say that your goals are somewhat orthogonal to learning programming. I teach coding to adults and am strongly in favour of starting with something like Scratch. It lets you get the logic of how code works, while avoiding the commonest pitfalls (syntax errors), and there's lots of examples and tutorials to work from. After that, I'd look at Python, which actually fits fairly well with your CLI goals as it exists mostly everywhere and you can use it for systems programming.
@jonathanhogg thank you!
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@antoine_ali thanks and yes I've just edited my original message to say that maybe I just dream of becoming a proficient sysadmin
if you have any books to recommend for C and Python, I'm all ears
@elena I'll check my archives to see what I have, my old coursework could be nice too If I can get my hands on it again
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@elena I'll check my archives to see what I have, my old coursework could be nice too If I can get my hands on it again
@antoine_ali thank you!!!!
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions
thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! 
️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI@elena
To get started in programming, Python and Ruby languages are good points to start (but I don't have any good tutorial bookmarks for those).
Then, to understand how computers work (and the link between hardware and software), the Computation Structures course is really good (Creative Commons license, initially created by MIT (https://ocw.mit.edu/6-004S17) and tweaked slightly here - https://personalcompute.net/resources/computation-structures). -
Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI@elena@aseachange.com The usefulness for your use case may be limited, but the Archlinux wiki has some pretty good coverage on running a Linux system with some depth into CLI and text configs. It is operating under the assumption that you're running specifically Arch, thus specifically Linux, but some of the advice is likely at least related to other similar systems.
Also, a command and concept you'd likely want to get familiar with ismanand man pages. In a linux terminal (and probably other unix ones) typingman <command>can give you some documentation on a given command's uses. And you can also look up those "man pages" on the internet (see: https://linux.die.net/man).
Some pages are better than others, but hopefully this could help you learn a bit about some of the tools you're gonna use. -
@inderix thank you! I suppose I already have some experience with that... all of last year I was managing a VPS that ran Debian and another that ran Ubuntu (on which I installed from scratch Ghost and Varnish Cache)... I need something slightly more advanced - but I really appreciate the advice, thank you!!!
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@elena
To get started in programming, Python and Ruby languages are good points to start (but I don't have any good tutorial bookmarks for those).
Then, to understand how computers work (and the link between hardware and software), the Computation Structures course is really good (Creative Commons license, initially created by MIT (https://ocw.mit.edu/6-004S17) and tweaked slightly here - https://personalcompute.net/resources/computation-structures).@admin fantastic resources, thank you!!!
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@elena@aseachange.com The usefulness for your use case may be limited, but the Archlinux wiki has some pretty good coverage on running a Linux system with some depth into CLI and text configs. It is operating under the assumption that you're running specifically Arch, thus specifically Linux, but some of the advice is likely at least related to other similar systems.
Also, a command and concept you'd likely want to get familiar with ismanand man pages. In a linux terminal (and probably other unix ones) typingman <command>can give you some documentation on a given command's uses. And you can also look up those "man pages" on the internet (see: https://linux.die.net/man).
Some pages are better than others, but hopefully this could help you learn a bit about some of the tools you're gonna use.@flesh thank you! you're the third person to recommend arch linux but I'm a little intimidated because of all the memes about its difficulty
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI@elena Maybe start learning a coding language with tutorials ??, although sysadmin is an ambitious hobby, it's also a whole field, AI might help in time
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI@elena If you're TRULY new to the CLI then you could always start with Veronica Explains Li'l Linux Lessons
She's also on PeerTube at @vkc but not all the lessons are migrated over. (A good follow for upcoming videos, though.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL7KvRskeog&list=PLjie1qS4xnWhsfRJ5nWL_6S7I-kKf49bf
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@jonathanhogg thank you!
@elena Oh! I meant to say, an advantage of starting with Scratch is that you can learn it with your child!
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@ottaross thanks! I have Ubuntu on my Raspi and I've been moving around in Terminal running commands for about a year... but it's mostly copy and paste.
Like I installed Ghost and Varnish Cache on my VPS and edited a lot of settings for it in Terminal... I just wish I could become more proficient in it, like rsync scares me a bit@elena Sounds like you're well on your way. A little effort to at least skim the man page for the commands you use, or finding a readable explanation for the commands will set you up well. Maybe a paper notebook to write down what you learn. (The effort of handwriting makes it stick in your head better.)
CLI knowledge is a spectrum - nobody knows every corner, it's just a case of gradually increasing your repertoire.
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAICLI is basically just a way to do things, it’s something you’ll learn by usage. CLI makes it easy to automate things: someone proficient with CLI will often create small (or big) shell script to automate or facilitate daily tasks.
You can think of CLI as being a one-line shell script.
May be start with what you want / need to do, and try from the CLI.rsync can be tested on small directories, just to make sure you got it right before creating a full backup. Being able to use it with the confidence and reliability you need from a backup process is a different story and needs some shell script competences.
I have some rsync backup scripts that I can share.It’s the most ambitious item on your list. You might want to start with some core principles:
- stay up to date
- read the documentation
- defend with layers (firewall, ACLs, service config, isolation, least privilege, etc.)
You’ll get tons of info from some of those guides: https://messervices.cyber.gouv.fr/catalogue/#guides
If you have many nights to spare, you can also look at https://www.cisecurity.org/cis-benchmarks Those documents are quite exhaustive but even if you don’t apply their recommendations, it’s filed with knowledge.
FreeBSD has a great handbook (HTML / PDF) https://docs.freebsd.org/en/books/handbook/ even though you might want to disregard everything about GUI (X11, Xorg, Wayland…).
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@flesh thank you! you're the third person to recommend arch linux but I'm a little intimidated because of all the memes about its difficulty
@elena@aseachange.com I am not fit to assess its difficulty in general. It certainly requires more tinkering than other distros, that's true. Or at least it did for a while.
Unless you wanna challenge yourself, I wouldn't recommend it as your first distro. It's certainly doable, but might be a bit steep depending on one's approach and current skills. Though setting up an Arch PC at some point in your learning journey might be a neat exercise.
What I wanted to say is that its wiki is quite extensive and some of the explanations there can prove to be at least useful starting points for other similar systems, as many of the underlying tools are quite similar between linux distros. Not sure about FreeBSD, but there's probably some similarity. -
Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI@elena I'd suggest taking Harvard's CS50 as your first step. It's excellent, free, and online. It won't just teach you a language, it'll teach you the *how* of programming.
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@elena Sounds like you're well on your way. A little effort to at least skim the man page for the commands you use, or finding a readable explanation for the commands will set you up well. Maybe a paper notebook to write down what you learn. (The effort of handwriting makes it stick in your head better.)
CLI knowledge is a spectrum - nobody knows every corner, it's just a case of gradually increasing your repertoire.
tldr pages, https://tldr.sh , can be a good complement to man pages.
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAIRuby on Rails is not really the hot language it was 20 years ago, but Michael Hartl's Ruby on Rails tutorial, available online, is a very good tutorial for learning to code.
If you are completely new, Learn to Program by Chris Pine is a good start.
No Starch Press has good books on the Linux CLI and on Bash Scripts
https://www.learnenough.com/ruby-on-rails-8th-edition-tutorial/beginning
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Dear Fedi friends,
The normalization of "vibe coding" in certain environments is pushing me in the exact opposite direction.
I, a normie (ok maybe a semi-technical person), would like to learn some basic computer programming*.
*** Update at 10pm ***
I’ve been offline for the past 6 hours and I checked my notifications before going to sleep: 71 new mentions thank you for all your generous advice, I’ll respond one-by-one tomorrow morning. Good night! ️
****
I need some advice about where to start because I'm a little clueless in this regard. Maybe it will help to share my goals, so that you can tailor your advice:
1) I'd like to become much more proficient using CLI... so that one day for example I could migrate a #YunoHost app to a new server without breaking anything
2) I'd like to be able to confidently run remote backups with rsync
3) Security: I need to learn how to turn my VPS or Raspi into a fortress
4) Eventually I'd like to learn #FreeBSD
Where does one even start?
I'm based in Paris, France, speak French, English and Italian, but remote learning is preferable because my child is in school only 4 days a week and has 2-week holidays every 6 weeks of school (thanks to the French educational system, don't ask me).
I'm super motivated to learn all these things, I just don't know where to start.
*Edit: maybe I'm just dreaming of becoming a proficient sysadmin
#AskFedi #MySoCalledSudoLife #NoAI
