Best Computing Experiences

My best “in class” computing experience

My best in class computing experience happened in Computer Systems 2. We were told to collaborate with a classmate on our semester project. I asked my partner to use Visual Studio Code and the Live Share extension which lets users edit the same project as if it were a Google Doc. The rest of the class was trying to use the student machine and kept running into issues with Putty and git. Since I use Arch Linux, I was able to run all of the professor’s provided tools on my own computer instead of the student machine. We had a streamlined programming experience which no other student matched.

My best “outside of class” computing experience

My best outside of class computing experience is configuring my workflow. This is not a single moment, but a collection of moments under the same project. As a freshman I deployed Nextcloud on my Linux server and set up my school documents to sync between my server, laptop, and desktop. I occasionally use the web interface to write documents and upload files from lab computers. I have also used Linux since I was a kid so my software stack has been deeply optimized for school work. I distinctly remember a school night my Junior year when I replaced Manjaro with Arch Linux on my laptop and setup system links to sync program-specific data over Nextcloud to my similarly configured desktop at home. Configuring my workflow has been my pride and joy for a long time and I become more enthusiastic with every single change.