I feel like a lot of people miss the forest for the trees when pursuing knowledge, that is, they see learning as a means for achieving something else. The knowledge they acquire must serve them is some way, usually the true final goal seems to be either money or feeding the ego. Spent hours learning a complex web technology? Well, it's usually done to get a well paying job or to feel that you're a good programmer, smart enough to tackle complex challenges.
Not that these two things are necessarily bad, we all need money to live and is nice to have confidence in one's ability, especially when that confidence is backed up by actual ability. The problem arises when we reduce learning to only its byproducts, when it's much more than that.
Learning, the process of understanding the world and, through that, of oneself, is a beautiful and rewarding pursuit on its own. What we get from it's useful, but it shouldn't be the ultimate reason we pursue it. It can be a motivator, many times I have learned things due to external reasons (for school or work), but its not the ultimate reason for my learning, it was simply a catalyst for something that I already had a deep desire for. Not the thing itself, the object of learning, but for the actual process of understanding it. It's akin to child's play. Children can acquire abilities while playing which can then be applied in other areas of their life to gain things. But that is not their ultimate reason for it, they play because is fun. I learn, and believe will all should learn, because is fun.
And to the poster's other reason for sadness, i.e that LLMs are getting smarter, remember that these robots don't learn by any means, unless one considers learning consuming information only to spit it back out partly digested. Learning is much more that, it requires life and, perhaps, even soul. A machine can't feel its soul soar upon realizing the limitless bounds of knowledge, it has no soul and it has no feelings.
A "visual" component for the Kitty terminal emulator. That is, a program meant to imitate the "selection" mode in Tmux, which is also akin to Vim's visual mode. To put it simply, it allows for the selection of text in the Kitty terminal using only the keyboard, while using Nvim in the backend to process the keystrokes and do the actual text selection which I then replicate in the terminal.
Granted, I'm pretty sure most people here have made far more complex tools (including ones that I use on the daily). But this was not only my first "serious" program, as it also was my first Ruby program. And I was pretty proud of it when finally got it done, especially the code that allowed for calling Nvim API functions as if they were just normally declared methods.
There is probably some rough edges on it still, as I don't really use it anymore (have since switched back to using Tmux), but for a good while it saved me a lot of hassle when copy-pasting inside Kitty. And it even supports block selection, something that, as far I know, Tmux visual mode can't do.
Oh, and please don't mind the Git commit messages, as I said, I was starting out and have since adopted a much better style.
Since I have some knowledge regarding computers, people keep giving me their somewhat broken or old spare notebooks, so I can have a crack a repairing them. They end up just sitting on the corner of my room gathering dust, mostly due to lack of time, but also of a fear from touching them. Something about attempting repairs at a hardware level, on anything beyond the cursory, just seems daunting to me.
I always had this desire to deeply understand the computer at the most fundamental, physical level, to be able to repair or manipulate them to my heart's desire. To be able to open one up and understand what I'm looking at just by, well, looking at it.
Maybe is the apparent complexity of it all (which I'm sure translates itself to real complexity), but something about it practically begs for me to understand it, but life gets in the way.
I suppose I should attempt to dedicate some time to learning the basics and trying (read: failing) to repair a few. Then maybe I could do something like these good folks.
Man, this brings me back. I spent a lot of my childhood in front of the computer playing games on emulators. My father had this CD with written "MAME" in blue ink on it, it got a lot of use in the family's ancient PC (I think it ran Windows 95? I'm not sure, only thing I remember is the homogeneous turquoise background that I always greeted me on startup).
Many afternoons where spent playing Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Final Fight and a bunch of others, too many to remember.
Through most of my life, I believed that I was utterly incapable of doing math and mostly just kind got by in high school, didn't really think I would need it that much. Then I took a reality check the first time I attempted the equivalent of my country's SAT test. At the time, I got in my head that I wanted to be a computer engineer and that required at least above average grades in math and physics so that I could have a chance.
There really isn't much I can offer in advice, besides: diligent study. That was what got me by. Sitting my ass at the desk everyday for hours on end, starting from first principles (and I mean first principles, like basic arithmetic first principles) and doing as many practice problems as I could. I probably did too many of them, but getting them right was the only thing that brought me any confidence that I was learning. I did that for about a year and, while it didn't turn me from math illiterate to math genius, it gave me enough of a foundation to get into college and have a easier time than my peers on subjects like calculus.
In your case, you can take a lighter approach, since it isn't urgent by any means, and you probably won't have as much time as I did. I recommend setting a time whenever you can to study, ideally it would be around two hours, but I find it more important be consistent about it. If you are anything like I was, you may have some knowledge on math, but its akin to Swiss cheese: full of holes. That being the case, start from the earliest point it makes sense to you. I was very paranoid at the time, so I started from basic arithmetic and, although that may not have been necessary, starting from scratch gave me the confidence that I wasn't missing anything going forward. Mathematics is a cohesive structure, where the higher elements are build upon the lower foundations, you cannot get very far without having a good grasp on the basics. As to learning resources, there are many online for free (Khan Academy[1], Paul's Math Notes[2], many introductory books at the Open Textbook Library[3])
Lastly, try to have fun with it. Back when I started the journey, I was to focused on what I could get from learning math (that is, getting into college and then, hopefully, a job), that took out of the experience a bit and the only thing that kept me going, though I didn't recognize at the time, was the joy of learning something that I believed my whole life to be unapproachable, at least by me. So be patient, if you bang your head enough times against this wall, I can attest that it eventually starts to show cracks.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply! This sounds like exactly the situation that I am in: some knowledge, but full of holes. Starting from the very basics to build confidence seems like the way to go.
Not that these two things are necessarily bad, we all need money to live and is nice to have confidence in one's ability, especially when that confidence is backed up by actual ability. The problem arises when we reduce learning to only its byproducts, when it's much more than that.
Learning, the process of understanding the world and, through that, of oneself, is a beautiful and rewarding pursuit on its own. What we get from it's useful, but it shouldn't be the ultimate reason we pursue it. It can be a motivator, many times I have learned things due to external reasons (for school or work), but its not the ultimate reason for my learning, it was simply a catalyst for something that I already had a deep desire for. Not the thing itself, the object of learning, but for the actual process of understanding it. It's akin to child's play. Children can acquire abilities while playing which can then be applied in other areas of their life to gain things. But that is not their ultimate reason for it, they play because is fun. I learn, and believe will all should learn, because is fun.
And to the poster's other reason for sadness, i.e that LLMs are getting smarter, remember that these robots don't learn by any means, unless one considers learning consuming information only to spit it back out partly digested. Learning is much more that, it requires life and, perhaps, even soul. A machine can't feel its soul soar upon realizing the limitless bounds of knowledge, it has no soul and it has no feelings.
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