Chere – Genesis One | The Studios' Blog

Programming and the typist

I’m a programmer.

I write code. I edit code. I look at code. I like code.

I have discovered a fatal flaw that I am working at remediating.

I am a really BAD typist.

I Love NotePad++! Check it out!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am actually a great typist. Not that I am super speedy with the key tapping – but I do have good accuracy and very few errors per line.

The problem is – I depend on my editor (in most cases NotePad++) and some other IDEs for their red-lining of my mistakes. Everyone does! That’s why we use tools like those. They help us be accurate and efficient thereby increasing effectiveness of effort!

Free training – from Microsoft

I have been enjoying my class – ITNW 1425 at HCC. This is an online class and at this point it seems pretty much ‘teach yourself’. So I READ and RE-READ a lot!

Apparently, after taking this class I should be ready to take a CompTIA Network+ exam prep class. Perhaps the certification exam itself.

One of the resources provided to us is this class, Networking Fundamentals (mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/networking-fundamentals-8249) taught by Microsoft professionals Christopher Chapman and Thomas Willingham

The complete list of course can be found here: Microsoft Virtual Academy

I have read the first sets of chapters in our text book. I admit, it’s overwhelming especially in an 8 week course. This Microsoft class really did help me sort out some confused points in my understanding. The instructors are easy to understand and seem relaxed and comfortable which lowers the stress level a lot.

I ended up with 3 pages of useful notes from this 1 hour 13min lecture.

Worth the time!

Soooo…How’s that Linux working for you?

I am currently enrolled in community college pursuing a AAS in Linux Sys Admin.

The pros and cons of my current Linux class – four weeks in:

The professor is very passionate (YAY!)
He doesn’t take breaks (BOO!)
He doesn’t mind if you do though (YAY!)
The class is 6 -10pm (BOO!)
The traffic is crazy and parking is wack (BOO!)
Other students in the class are really nice (YAY! and YAY!)

We do most things in the console provided through a separate company and not the college. This means that I can log in from home and do homework and labs and see all that progress when I login at school. School machines are routinely wiped. I was pretty torqued when my VM was no where to be found the 2nd week of class!

Our testing has been lightweight so far and most of it is stuff I know already. It turns out I have a really high recall of old MS-DOS; which is not the same as LINUX commands but the quite similar. I make a lot of comparative connections between the two. It also helps that I have experience with command line in several other contexts (Putty and mySQL). Unfortunately, unless you pay extra or work in the field, modern web hosts don’t generally give you console access. So those experiences aren’t as broad or deep as I would like.