the study wall

the rust notes weren't the whole story. beside them sat a wall of bookmarks — a folder called old-context, saved in a single burst at the end of october. it was the honest map of how i was trying to get better: not one path, but every door i could find. and it wasn't a hobby. it was pointed at a career — i wanted to work as a programmer, and i was gathering every way in

the doors

bootcamps — flatiron, general assembly, app academy, hack reactor. certifications — aws, google, comptia. problem sites — leetcode, codewars, codeforces, project euler, mit's online course materials. interview prep — pramp, interviewing.io, the tech interview handbook, the star method. a whole row of webinars and event feeds, from linux foundation to owasp to cloud native now

it looks scattered, but it isn't. it's the same pattern as the rust notes, scaled up: keep the options open, learn a little from everywhere, and let the tools i actually liked pull ahead. the rust habit was the one that stuck because it was the one i kept coming back to

what stuck

most of those doors i only cracked. a handful i actually walked through. and that's the honest shape of it — not a clean curriculum, but a scatter of openings, with the ones that fit worn smooth by use. the study wall is my own record of wanting a career in programming, saved in one folder before the real work began

学 is to learn. the wall held every path i thought might help; the work narrowed it to the few that did — and one of them, the elastic stack, was the thing a friend saw and believed in