@alanthwaits@noc.social
Oh gosh no, I really am NOT a programmer. I do enjoy putting my mind into that "be creative within these strict parameters" state, because sometimes there's a big Aha moment where a solution for a convoluted problem just comes to you. It's a little addictive. But for an ignoramus like me, there's a lot of sweat and pondering that has to come before that can happen, which can be painful. 😉

If you want a from-the-ground-up look at how programming can be structured beautifully, check out Donald Knuth. His magnum opus, "The Art of Computer Programming," is an amazing classic. I didn't work my way through the whole thing, which I regret, but was able to dive in and out of it to find ways around and through things that stumped me.

I'd always thought that going through the whole work step by step would be a great retirement project to keep my brain working, but when I actually did retire I'd become so disenchanted with arguing with computers all the time that I walked away from it. And gave away my Knuth set. And threw everything Windows out of the house. 😆

Enough time has passed that I'm up for a little bit of fooling around here and there-- I've been playing with Raspberries since the first one came out-- but am not all that serious about it. I don't want to risk going back to that burned-out state I was in for a time at the end of my career.

If you'd like a decent basic intro to networks, administration, security, and so on, Google offers a free set of certification courses through Coursera (which isn't free, but is surprisingly inexpensive, I think it cost me a total of fifty bucks) here: https://grow.google/certificates/#?modal_active=none
I'm self-taught on all that stuff, so did those cert courses to see if I could. Worked out fine, it's a really well-done series.