It used to be just because I was interested. Then life got in between and I ditched it a bit, until Microsoft announced that "find anything you ever did"-feature. I installed Ubuntu again after quite a few years and stayed because I finally did not have to spend 3 days to get my video card working "kinda" and I found out my games actually work. No need to use Windows anymore.
Because they can
There goes my best job interview question I like to ask applicants for a front-end position
Just dumb. In the case of the company i work for at least.
Pretty sure they're called "wappies" in the Netherlands
In the army they say: "No plan survives first contact with the enemy" I believe, right? I think the same counts for trips abroad. You'll probably get sick in the first days because of all the built up stress preparing for the trip finally releasing, you will forget something "important" when leaving the airplane, the museum you really wanted to see might be closed that week because of renovations, etc.
What I remember most from my trips are those cafes you stumble upon that afternoon you did not plan anything, that sunset on the edge of the river while walking back to the place you're staying and the best souvenir is that painting you bought from that friendly guy at that market you came across. So, try to take it slow.
More practical tips: try to follow the local schedule. For instance, in Spain don't try to eat dinner before 21:00 and in France don't try to go shopping during lunchtime.
Also, take some emergency food for when you cannot find a nice place to eat that still has a spot for two but you are getting really hangry. A bar of some sorts for instance.
And take pictures, but don't experience everything through your lense. Also, imagine what you would actually like to view when back home. I only take pictures with people on them and not in any tourist hotspots; I can find enough pictures of those online already.
Enjoy!
I started with HTML and CSS because I liked to build my own useless small websites. Then I noticed it was nice to copy+paste some javascript scripts someone else wrote into them to get some "fun" interactive components. Then I slowly started to make little changes to those scripts and that way slowly learned more and more. It was not the quickest way to learn, but the most fun, because there was little setup necessary (I literally used windows notepad to save files as .html and opened them in my browser) and I could quickly see results.
Since you're interested in FOSS I assume you use an OS with a nice terminal. You could write some bash scripts to do simple tasks for you maybe? (Maybe write a script that removes old downloads from your downloads folder, or something that can delete all files that end in '.temp' (IDK just stupid ideas that could be fun to try to start coding).
Python is a nice option as well, it has a lot of useful options and documentation and gives you very readable code, making it easier to learn good practices!
Just make sure you do something fun and you will learn what's necessary along the way.
Luckily it's not that dangeroud if a RAM 2500 crashes into you.
#1 sponsor is Shopify, how does that affect the indepentness?
Discussion in all my relationships: "I just want you to listen to me, not try to fix the problem!". I think I'll just go for the guys next time I hear that...
There really is no third option? Strange kind of democracy.
Why are you still on it though?