I must be crawling then.

Whatever.

I'm taking baby steps in my code, believe it or not, this is good. I mean it.

One month ago, I barely knew what to do, where to go for info. It was a shot in the dark, but I can build apps now. I can cross build apps. Hey I can run apps now too. :)

And what is more amazing, I can read source code now. Nah, not that university grade code we're so used to be reading. I mean real code, done by real people.

Yeah, giggle all you want. I don't care.

Oh, I can write source code to. Nah, not that university grade code we're so used to be writing. I mean real code, done by real people.

No I won't start by counting which week we are.

But I know I lost a lot of time running in circles trying to make the metadata software work like it should. Don't be scared about the bad name, it is supposed to help me build packages for easier deploying of applications.

It means, my dear readers, I've been chasing the wrong trail for a very long time.

I thought it would be the easiest path, I must admit. It does CVS incantations for me, it builds dependencies, it cross-builds, it chooses among versions. It is really, really a good pet.

But I should have remembered the KISS principle. Oh you don't know the KISS principle? KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

After all this time, I finally started building things on my own. That means CVS incantations, ./autogen.sh && ./configure && make && make install

It's good to get back where man are really man and tools are only tools.

Two scales for development, "web" and "desktop".

If you look at SoCers blogs of web development projects, you already see good progress. It is nice and rewarding to see their progress.

And it is quite frustrating to be yet setting up development environment, familiarizing itself with tons of code. You get used to it, but it takes constant reminding.

If you are in the same boat as I, just remember this, and worried as I about the mid-evaluation. Well, best advice I can offer is: trust your guns. :)

A week ago I considered myself quite skilled in GNU/Linux.

Being a certified instructor for Mandriva Conectiva got to count something. :)

But then I had this weird idea of becoming developer. I mean, GNU/Linux developer.

And it all went crazy. Suddenly, I became "n00b" again. Lurking in IRC channels, making stupid queries in Google that return no useful results, doing things the worst possible way, until I find one page describing steps much easier than mine.

Then I go and ask embarassing questions to people in IRC, and they patiently help me understand what that new soup of acronyms mean.