Reading 09: Birth of a Nerd OS

Quite frankly, Linus Torvalds’ upbringing and creation of Linux isn’t interesting to me. His upbringing is irrelevant in regard to Torvalds’ creating Linux. Linus created the Linux kernel because he wanted to use the functions of his personal computer that had an 80386 processor; I can see how his upbringing could have played a role in him eventually developing is own operating system, as he’s the type of person to scratch a personal itch or solve a problem, and this is evident through his behavior throughout his childhood. At some point in my childhood, I was also very good at math and science, but I didn’t really grow up with any computers to develop my programming skills. For the majority of my childhood, I only used the computer at school to play Set and Quiddler during ATR to hone our critical-thinking and problem-solving skills or type up reports and papers. My family only had one computer at home (we used the computers at the public library more often than the computer at home because it was so outdated), and my 5 siblings and I had to share the computer to do schoolwork or use the Internet. I couldn’t really afford to tinker with the computer at home or in the public library, and my high school didn’t offer any computer science-related courses or extracurriculars, so I wasn’t able to explore my interest in computer science through those avenues. Sure, I could’ve quenched my curiosity to learn more about computers and programming through other avenues while growing up if I tried harder, but honestly, I never really heard about programming until my junior year of high school when I toured another high school. I was always heavily involved in STEM extracurriculars and classes during both my middle school and high school years, so I was quite shocked to discover there was a whole other field of STEM that I had not explored. With that tangent aside though, quoting the great Abigail Gervase (my roommate), “Why are we getting our dicks hard for every tidbit of “wisdom” that comes out of any relatively-successful human being these days? Congratulations. Linus is successful. What does that have to do with me? Our life experiences are completely different.” While I wouldn’t exactly put it the way that Abby did, I couldn’t agree more with her. Success comes in different forms for everyone. Why are we, as a society, so obsessed with the success of other individuals? It’s not like we can emulate their success by doing a case study on that individual and reproducing their actions to a T? Success is a combination of luck, skill, and a whole lot prayer. Will I ever find success in the same manner that Linus Torvalds did? Probably not, but that does not mean I won’t be a successful individual. I know that while I won’t find the same success as Linus, I plan on finding success through other avenues in my life.