It begins like most days I spend learning to code - on Reddit.
I’m part of a subreddit about using ChatGPT to build apps because I want to see how fucked the future is and one dude had made something called Memerator which is honestly pretty sweet. You give it a topic and the intended audience and it just…makes a meme for you. Here are three it made when I gave it the topic of ‘coding’ and the audience of ‘artist’:
Those are honestly not bad! And so I’m like ok cool lemme see how to do this maybe i can make something similar. I pop into the comments and find this:
A github link! For all those unfamiliar, github is a place where coders store their code? Like, you put your coat in the closet and your code in a github. Specifically, a ‘repo’ which is short for repository, coding once again blowing it in their naming of things. Repository? Makes me think of something going into the bum I know that’s a suppository shut up.
Anyways. I’ve actually done a bunch of noodling around with github and so I’m not afraid of clicking on the link at all.
Is this basically what coding is? Just becoming less and less scared to click on awful sounding links?
So now I’m in the github page and here’s what I see:
Basically it’s just the guy’s whole code including most importantly a README.md file. Now this, they named well. Clear, to the point and in all caps! A little needy, honestly - READMEIFYOUDONTIWILLCRUMBLE.MD
the .md means markdown which is a cooky little language for making stuff bold and italicized using asterisks. Substack actually allows for markdown, so like if you start a new line with a “#” it will be an H1, Heading 1:
Markdown? Now THAT’S a sale I’m interested in.
If you did four little digit guys like this ‘####’ it’d give you a heading 4:
markdown i repeat mark is down can someone get mark up plz
And so on!
The needy readme
a readme file is basically an instruction manual. A ‘start here.’ Sometimes they’re crap but sometimes they’re good. They call this ‘documentation.’ Lol.
So there on the bottom I see there’s a tutorial for how this was built! Neato! So I jump over there and find this:
How’s about that! It turns out that this tutorial and app were made by “Wasp,” which, if we look back at the READMEMAYBE is also the name of the ‘full-stack React/NodeJS framework’ used to make this app.
What in the almighty shortstack - I’ve been had! Tricked! Bamboozled by a bee. Buzz buzz said the advertiser content because that’s what all this is! An app made using Wasp by Wasp to teach me how to Wasp but what the hell is Wasp?
Well color me curious because now i’m like shit I wanna run this Wasp thing even though I don’t really know what it is!
Let’s pause
Waht the hell is going on?! How did I get here? Coding more and more feels like following a trail of breadcrumbs you follow to solve a mystery that you’ve forgotten about, committed simply now to the hunt while having zero idea of what you’re doing or why.
What is Wasp? Who cares what Wasp is! I gotta figure out how to use it because…I can! And I love solving little mysteries on the internet.
This connects to my broader theory that the entire internet is basically a mystery solving machine. Twitter especially — you go on there and you see tweets being zoomed back and forth about something that feels HEATED but you don’t know exactly what. So you click and click and investigate until you know what’s going on in a debate that’s miles away from the original tweet you saw but for some reason you know everything about. “Ok so they’re beefing becuase this guy used to work with this guy but now they hate each other and neither of them can eat fish anymore”
Back to wasp
I scroll down to Part 1 of the tutorial:
Easy as shit, I think to myself, knowing how to both copy and paste.
What the shit fuck is this the tutorial said it was easy so why am I getting red text!!! I can tell from looking at the error that its fundementally bad (this is what they call a coder’s instinct, the sixth sense you develop After doing copy paste a bunch of times)
I guess I have to ‘install’ Wasp I think, remembering that most of what I’ve done thus far is exactly that - installing ‘libraries’ in python that do specific little tasks and are required to make the code work i truly don’t even know. This is what is so weird about all of this — I know how to move my way around the landscape but I have no idea how anything works which, sure, is how most of life is now — cars, appliances, computers, but I’m actually coding! Shouldn’t I understand it? If a car mechanic was like ‘eh idk how the brakes work at all pal i just know you probably need a bit of this fluid here good luck!’ I would be worried.
Should I become a car mechanic?
No, I gotta solve this Wasp thing.
I try a bunch of stuff to install Wasp. Python doesn’t work but NPM does. I have no idea what NPM is but i know I use it a lot hahaha.
Woof! I have vulnerabilities and four of them are purple level critical!!!
I obcviously want to take care of them so I do the audit fix command and add a ‘—force’ which, again, agressive.
That doesn’t work diddly so I try the original command again but that doesn’t work either!!
I’ve never wanted to solve something more in my life and I genuinely have no recollection as to why I’m doing any of this.
I decide to march my ass down to the manager and go straight to Wasp’s website. I find their quick start guide siiick:
IT DOESN’T WORK ON WINDOWS1/1/1/1/1? Maybe this was worth mentioning in the god damn tutorial what the hell. But no matter, I’ve already sacrificed everything I own for this, might as well keep going and… “set up Ubuntu.”
Huh.
Linux like the cat
I’ve known about Linux since I was a kid. It was the drug that all the weird kids who are cool were doing. Windows was alcohol, Mac was weed and maybe pschedelics, and Linux was DMT laced with cat litter, a high that would last three seconds for the rest of your life. It was not to be fucked with, and so never I did.
Until now. If you-bunt-too was the way I’d get Wasp, then let’s do it. According to the message above, I need WSL. Great!
I pop over to Microsoft’s website with instructions on how to install Linux. Great! I follow the command and type in “wsl —install”
What I’m installing, I have no idea. If hackers aren’t doing this, like putting up tutorials online that trick idiots like me into just handing over access to their computers in the guise of ‘learning to code’ they should.
No, in fact, I should do that…but not until I figure out this Wasp thing why was I doing that again?
Linux is installed already? Guess I musta slept-coded again, whatever. Now I gotta pick a ‘valid distribution’ from this table of names and friendly names.
Though I’m tempted to go with openSUSE Tumbleweed, I decide on the simple and classic Ubuntu because its name and Friendly name are the same.
And now we’re here. See those top two lines?
It was that easy?? But like, where is the Ubuntu? How do I access it? Is it like courage, having been inside me all along?
No time to think, must get into my Ubuntu to access Wasp to access this mememaker thing ?!
CLIFFHANGER ALERT: this post is getting too long for email so that means I’m gonna end it here and release part two soon.
Will I ever solve the simple problem I set out to ?
Is the Ubuntu simply a play call in baseball like, “hey larry, ubuntu”?
Now that I’m on Linux am I a super coder who isa huge deal on Githubs across the nation? From GrubHub to GitHub: the Alex Dobrenko story.
Is it bad to post screenshits of my terminal where you can see my file structure I cannot imagine so but again, idk what i’m doing!
“I’ve never wanted to solve something more in my life and I genuinely have no recollection as to why I’m doing any of this.“
I don’t think I’ve read a better distillation of 80% of my time spent “coding” (only in quotes because a lot of it is browser-tab-rabbit-holing, which is rarely as dirty as it sounds). It’s such a weird mental place.
I’ve had to learn to suppress that urge to rabbit-hole just so I can remain productive...it’s like every few minutes a mental alarm goes off and asks, in a voice much like mine but more gruff, “What was your original goal?” If what I’m doing now doesn’t match that goal, then I have to abandon this poor rabbit’s hole and get back to solid ground.
Remember: a few hours of trial and error can save *minutes* of reading the documentation!