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! ❤️

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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 once you learn the basics of a programming language check out Advent of Code https://adventofcode.com/ for practice code puzzles.
Advent of Code 2025