At the moment I'm helping people get to grips with Linux with my Newbie's Linux Manual, Linux Tips in our weekly Linux e-zine (The Linux Bits), and of course coding this entire site... Phew! But I also want to help out the Open Source community in the future. So I thought the natural progression would be for me to help out other "wannabe" Open Source programmers whilst I learn the intracies of programming, in Linux.

Milestones (Yuck!)

As much as I hate the word, I've decided to take up the challenge, by identifying "milestones". The first (and most important) milestone, is to learn the basics of C. Why C? Linux is essentially a clone of Unix, and Unix owes its existence to the power of a simple-yet-complex little language called C.

The natural progression from there... will be to develop my C skills further, understand the operating system better and "get-my-hands-dirty" with a little help from GTK+. Here's what GTK stands for:

(GIMP (GNU (GNU's Not Unix! (Note the recursive twist)) Image Manipulation Package) ToolKit)

...is it not truly beautiful? ;)

So why GTK+? Three reasons:

1. I love the look of GNOME applications.
2. It ties in nicely with C.
3. It's GNU, need I say more? ;)

I Need Motivated!!

Previous Programming Experience:

Commodore 16: BASIC*
Spectrum +2 : BASIC*, a little assembly
Sam Coupé   : BASIC*
Amiga       : Amos Professional**
Vax         : COBOL
DOS         : Borland Turbo Pascal 7*, a little assembly
Windows     : Borland Delphi 2*, a little Visual Basic 5
Linux       : Perl*, a little C

*  = Proficient
** = God Status ;)

Ok, I've dabbled with C on a few occasions, but I never seem to get past "the first few chapters". I then leave it for ages before I return and find I've forgotten everything, and to make matters worse I have misplaced the notes I scribbled down. To help motivate me, I'm going to post my notes on this site. If I haven't updated this section in a week then please feel free to send me an e-mail telling me to "get my act together!".