This is the story of every child raised in an environment where society ingrained a single lesson from childhood: Son, you are bright; you are destined to become a doctor. And that innocent child accepted this as the absolute truth, adopting a life goal that was never truly theirs to begin with.
My story was quite similar. I was always brought up with the notion that becoming a doctor would be the ultimate achievement. Believing this to be right, I made the same mistake so many kids do: choosing Biology as a major subject in Matriculation and Intermediate. It didn't take me long to realize that I just wasn't cut out for Biology. In an attempt to rectify this mistake, I ended up making another one: opting for Bioinformatics for my Bachelor's degree. It was here that the realities of both worlds—Biology and Computer Science—were revealed to me. Some mistakes are inevitable, and they serve as guideposts, steering you toward your true path in life.
While getting into Bioinformatics was definitely a mistake, I tried my best to survive. During this time, I even developed a tool called Bio-Agent. However, the truth remained: I wasn't made for Biology, and Biology wasn't made for me. Yet, this very mistake led me to my true path—what is commonly known as an interest. It is a tragedy of our education system that almost no one truly knows what their actual interests are.
Anyway, as soon as it dawned on me that I was meant for Computer Science—that this was the one thing I could think about for hours on end—I looked at my laptop, which was running Fedora Linux, and said to myself: Let's learn bash. I started learning bash and just kept going, gradually integrating bash commands into my daily workflow.
Then came the phase where, while using Fedora, I recalled hearing that on Linux, you can customize absolutely anything to your liking. I tried incredibly hard to add a frosted glass or glassmorphism effect in Fedora, only to discover that it wasn't natively possible. And even if I managed a workaround, it would require far too many compromises. I realized I couldn't just wait around for system updates for minor UI changes; I wanted my laptop tailored exactly to my own workflow and temperament.
That’s when I started reading about Hyprland and decided to build my working environment from scratch. I immediately installed Hyprland and began tweaking its configuration to suit my needs. I edited it bit by bit every day, initially commenting out whatever I didn't need.
Around this time, inspired by bipedal robots like the Emo robot, I decided: why not build my own robot and name it Kuku, Even without the physical hardware, I started programming some of its core functions. While saving up for the hardware and continuing to code, I noticed my laptop's RAM consumption was hitting the roof. When I traced the root cause, I realized my system was running numerous background tasks I had absolutely no idea about. I identified systemd as a major factor, and that very night, I jumped ship to Artix Linux. I cloned my dotfiles there, only to find out that because of Artix’s rolling release model, the syntax had updated, breaking my entire configuration.
Undeterred, I stayed up all night rewriting the syntax and configuring my dotfiles specifically for Artix. During this process, I began diving deep into low-level processes. To solidify my understanding, I wrote my own shell in C++, which pulled me even deeper into the world of low-level programming. And that brings us to the present day, where I am learning Rust and rewriting my shell in it.
This trajectory will likely shift again in a while, because I am a traveler on a path that could take an unexpected turn tomorrow—nobody knows. The purpose of writing this isn't to declare that I have reached my destination. Rather, it's to acknowledge that I have finally begun the journey on a path that was truly meant for me.
I have learned from everyone who has crossed paths with me on this journey, and I thank you all from the bottom of my heart. A special thanks to my parents, who have supported me at every turn and continue to do so. And how could I forget Kuku (my first pet cat, lost to a virus), who completely reshaped my entire perspective on life.
To follow my day-to-day journey: Timeline