linux

My boyfriend is IM'ing me through installing linux because he says I should use Linux, not Mac, if I want to even think of learning to program. Since all my nerd friends use Linux I am going to trust him on this one. Downloading via Ubuntu. Installation will be... interesting.

Trying to figure out the basics

Perhaps I should be tweeting my trials and tribulations instead of blogging. At the moment I've downloaded the MAMP software and can't figure out how to install it. I'm a total noob. Hopefully once I get going, as in, have all the stuff I need installed properly, these posts will be longer and more insightful.

I hate being a noob. It hurts my brain. But then again, learning is fun.

Getting back into this, for real this time...

Ok, ok. So I'm super ADD and I get massively distracted by life every time I sit down to teach myself how to program. I didn't even get past chapter 3 in my JavaScript book. I'm ashamed.

The good news is, I signed myself up for two computer sci classes at the community college for the fall. The professors are supposed to be awful (thanks ratemyprofessors.com for getting me real excited about these classes, not) BUT I'm hoping that a structured into to programming will, at the least, get me on the right track.

At the moment I'm signed up for Intro to C++ and Intro to Data Management Systems. The names of both those classes alone scare me to bits. But if programming is a language, it should be learnable, at least to the point where I can not be so deathly afraid of it and look at programmers as if they are gods with minds far beyond the intellect of normal folk like myself. Or, I'll be able to understand exactly WHY they are gods and I have a feeling it has nothing to do with knowing "how" to program, more like "how" to organize things with a language that anyone can learn.

Tonight, however, I'm staring at my Beginning PHP5, Apache, MySQL Web Development book and considering trying to get through a chapter or two. I'm under the weather and have the night to my lonesome, so might as well start learning something... even though PHP is going to be very different from C++, which I'll begin tackling in a few weeks.

I'm not even sure PHP5 is current anymore, but hopefully the book is still good. I have a bagillion random programming books that I've bought over the last 3 years or so. Time to put them to use. Really. I mean it this time.