education How did you all become so smart? (Not sarcastic)

[J_Maloney]

I am curious about how everyone here came about to know their various aspects of IT! 
I would love to read some of your back stories and how you as individuals gained your knowledge of all things electric  

Would love to know various courses you attended, people that influenced you and even some videos you may have watched to broaden your interests

 

Thanks guys 

[Lord Nicoll]

2 minutes ago, J_Maloney said:

I am curious about how everyone here came about to know their various aspects of IT! 
I would love to read some of your back stories and how you as individuals gained your knowledge of all things electric  

Would love to know various courses you attended, people that influenced you and even some videos you may have watched to broaden your interests

 

Thanks guys 

*looks over at the pile of dead PC parts killed from overclocking, ice and soldering fuck ups* Hmm, idk, maybe trial and error?

Edited September 27, 2017 by Lord Nicoll

[LtStaffel]

"Why, and how?" *googles* "Okay, that's cool. Why, and how?" *googles*... You can get very, very, very, very, deep very quickly that way. That's why I know more about the hardware of GPU computing than anyone in their right mind would ever want to waste time on. (I learned about FPGAs today for pete's sake and I'm not even an engineer or anything). I've also managed to match a professional cybersecurity pentester in knowledge just via free information on the internet.

You can learn anything you want to.

[Sartaknight]

When I was younger I had an IT guy who came to my house to "fix" computers, and I asked the shit out of him. Nowadays I watch lots of LTT and other channels and learn quite a lot from them! I would not consider myself "so smart", but Im up there I guess 

[Sartaknight]

2 minutes ago, LtStaffel said:

"Why, and how?" *googles* "Okay, that's cool. Why, and how?" *googles*... You can get very, very, very, very, deep very quickly that way. That's why I know more about the hardware of GPU computing than anyone in their right mind would ever want to waste time on. (I learned about FPGAs today for pete's sake and I'm not even an engineer or anything). I've also managed to match a professional cybersecurity pentester in knowledge just via free information on the internet.

You can learn anything you want to.

Indeed. Dont use internet for porn only! Do reseach of things you care about and you will learn eventually. Everything is out there. Even here

[Strayan_Hades]

All jokes aside, watching Linustechtips and techquicky helps you learn the basics alot easier

 

Also if you want to go more indepth do a IT course or subject at school.

[Mira Yurizaki]

I wasn't afraid to muck around with my PC just so I could get something running. :3

 

I also took up computer engineering as my major in college.

[Drak3]

Copious amounts of research, followed by putting potential knowledge into practice.

2 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

Mostly most of the knowledge i had are from  forums.

If I had a dollar for everything useful I learned from a forum, I'd have 5 yen.

[This kid builds pc]

I think it's my asian genes

[J_Maloney]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Copious amounts of research, followed by putting potential knowledge into practice.

If I had a dollar for everything useful I learned from a forum, I'd have 5 yen.

*Googles yen-dollar exchange rate*  

[BuckGup]

Stuff not working and then me turning to the forums for answers.

[WkdPaul]

By reading every book and articles I could put my hands on, out of pure curiosity. Also studying ...

 

If you're interested and look for the "why" instead of just asking people and sticking to what they say, then you'll learn a lot more and a lot quicker. Some concept are also easier to understand for some, so there might be some of that, but in the end, if you're interested enough by the subject and really look into the "why" of things you should be good.

Edited September 27, 2017 by wkdpaul
Typos

[Enderman]

By seeing the things people post and then trying to prove them wrong.

Sometimes I prove myself wrong :'(

Not usually though

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, L.Lawliet said:

Thats not even a bloody dollar...

Precisely.

 

Just now, J_Maloney said:

*Googles yen-dollar exchange rate*  

I'll save you some time. A whole hell of a lot less than a dollar.

3 minutes ago, L.Lawliet said:

well ur mileage may vary cause i asked a lot of shits in tech forums not just LTT though..

I get less mileage out of forums than my diesel truck gets on gas. They're adequate for basics, but I've yet to learn anything really meaningful beyond that. Magetank's memory OC guide being the only exception, and even then, it's not really your typical forum post.

[suchamoneypit]

For me it all started when i had to do things and came across issues, and i had to solve them myself. Over time I had to solve so many issues that in order to solve them i had to get a knowledge of how things worked. Now, years later, ive solved so many issues as well as seeing other peoples problems their solutions on the forum and enough hands-on experience that I pretty much know how everything works and have a lot of knowledge and experience to draw upon.

 

For years i read forums and watched videoes to improve my knowledge.

[NvidiaIntelAMDLoveTriangle]

Honestly video games. I started a as kid playing consoles back in the day then my brother in law showed me I still remember F-22 Raptor on his Windows 95 laptop, that's when I started to really likes computers. Eventually I was given my own desktop pc and I was really left alone with it. And I just started to learn from it by just messing with it, I taught myself.

[ARikozuM]

I've always found physics to be the best teacher. #osmosis

Spoiler

I don't know why "learning through osmosis" is the common phrase when diffusion would make more sense...

 

[WkdPaul]

3 minutes ago, Enderman said:

*snip*

Oh yeah, being wrong and recognizing that is sometimes a big part in learning.

 

Proving yourself wrong is, IMO, a great thing, it actually shows you understand when and why you're wrong, all good things (but sometimes hard to take, it always suck realizing that).

[Hiitchy]

I got my first PC when I was 6. My neighbour gave it to me and it was a really kind gesture. They also gave me a dot matrix printer, the ones where everything inside was all metal and it said "hands off, very hot." 

 

I pulled apart computers and my entire basement was in disarray from all five of them. I had two that didn't work because of hard drive failure, and then had three others that had either windows xp, dos or windows 2000. After putting them back together I kept doing it and it kept getting better and better.

 

Software wise, googling and learning from people was what I did. I learned what ntoskrnl.exe was and why it shouldn't be deleted hahaha

[dcgreen2k]

When I first started upgrading my old Dell PC, I was pretty afraid that I would break it somehow, so I did tons of research on it.

[This kid builds pc]

The real reason I got good at PCs is because before I built my first PC I messed around with older pentiums and some core 2 duos/quads and for about half a year I watched multiple computer videos daily (dozens), read wiki pages, forums, and other sources. Next thing you know I was competent enough to do some stuff.

[StackUnderflow]

I don't work in IT nor do I code for work. With that being said, no one that I know at work/went to school with don't know how to code at some basic level. I highly doubt you can get a white collar job as a young person without some knowledge of coding and/or knowing exactly how the linux command line works.

 

Hardware wise, my old high school upgraded computers and tossed out like 50 old AMD Athlon and P4/Celeron computers, and I took 10 home. That was my first ever cluster. I broke alot of hardware reconfiguring this stuff (chipped CPUs because of stupid heatsink retention braces). My tech teacher had a bin (like a big bin, like 10 feet by 10 feet by 4 feet bin) of old computer parts. I built 2 machines from that bin by 10th grade and he let me keep it.

[LtStaffel]

50 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Copious amounts of research, followed by putting potential knowledge into practice.

If I had a dollar for everything useful I learned from a forum, I'd have 5 yen.

Tom's hardware though...

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, LtStaffel said:

Tom's hardware though...

Thanks for reminding me.

 

3 Yen.

[LtStaffel]

I want to mention that the best information you can find about computers will be in one of three places: YouTube (especially little-known videos where the person is an absolute pro in their topic but for some reason isn't popular for it), books (especially those ones written in XP SP1 days that teach you the nitty gritty why's and how's that most people today flat out don't know), and finally, PAPERS!! (Need I go into white-papers, phrack, and just those random things you find on the internet?! I learned counter-terrorism driving from a book that was written in 1996 in PDF format online! I'll let you have fun and try to find it yourself)