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+Title: My first time
+Date: 2018-06-23
+Category:
+Tags:
+Slug: First-Time
+Lang: en
+
+The other day I remembered a very important day on my life, one of those early
+beginnings that started to change my mind: **The first time I contributed to
+free software**.
+
+My first contribution was in 2014, more specifically the 22nd of May of 2014.
+
+That's only 4 years ago. But, at the same time, they already passed 4 years
+since then? OMG.
+
+You get the feeling, right?
+
+You may think I started coding when I was 10 or something like that. I didn't.
+I learned programming in the university and not as well as a Computer Scientist
+because I studied Telecommunication Engineering and computers are just a third
+of the studies while the other two parts are electronics and signals related
+things.
+
+I'm not a young hacker or a genius. My parents don't like computers. I didn't
+live with a computer at home since I was a toddler. That didn't happen.
+
+Today I want to tell you my story. Not because it's awesome and you'll love it.
+I want to tell you my story because it's **really** standard. I want you to see
+that you can also contribute to Free Software. Anyone can.
+
+So, how did it all start?
+
+I started my university studies in 2009. The first year we had one semester of
+C and the next one of C++. Not real programming classes, just introductory
+stuff for the languages and computers. A couple of years later we had a
+networking subject where I used Linux for the first time. The computers had
+*Kubuntu* installed. At that time my laptop started to give me some trouble and
+I installed *Kubuntu* in a dual boot and tested it. It was nice.
+
+Few time later the *Windows* partition failed again and I was comfortable
+enough in *Kubuntu* to delete it and use only *Kubuntu*. It was easy.
+
+The second semester that year another subject had some focus on Linux because
+it was a networks and tools subject and I really needed it. We learned to use a
+terminal, some SQL and many things like that. Simple tools but they resulted to
+be useful in the future. I was really surprised by the power of the terminal
+and I studied a lot in my free time I finished the subject with honours just
+because I was really interested on it. As I said, I'm not a genius, I was
+interested.
+
+We had a subject about *Minix*, following Andrew Tannenbaum's *Operating
+Systems: Desing and Implementation* book and *Minix* version 1, which gave us
+the initial needed knowledge about Operating Systems at that time. That started
+to give me some info about the ethical part of the free software and also
+sparked more interest.
+
+Next year I had a couple of Operating Systems subjects (the theoretical one and
+the practical one). The teacher was part of *KDE Spain*, and he talked about
+free software in class. I was quite into it at that time. The practical part of
+the subject was real software, we covered the contents of the book called
+*Advanced Linux programming*[^1]. That was pure C development and we didn't
+have a lot of knowledge on that. We just touched some C/C++ during the first
+year and some assembly in a couple of subjects. It was really hard, but it was
+really cool.
+
+We made a small shell. It was great!
+
+Final year[^2] of the university: I had to make the final project.
+
+I didn't know what to do so I contacted the teacher who was part of *KDE Spain*
+and he mentored me. I installed a IRC client and started talking with the
+people at *kde-telepathy* project. I wasn't used to that kind of collaborative
+development. Heck, I wasn't used at any kind of development! But it was all
+good, mostly thanks to the great people in the project (David, Diane, George,
+Martin... *You* are awesome!).
+
+The project itself was a *KDE* application, *KDE-Telepathy*, a big one. Thanks
+to heaven, my part of the project was quite separated so I could focus on my
+piece. That taught me to search in a big codebase and focus on my part. Then I
+had to code in C++ like in the real life, not like designed problems I've
+worked on at the university, and I also had to read tons of documentation about
+*Qt*, *KDE* and anything else.
+
+I started with the contribution that opened this post and I went on until I
+renewed the whole interface. It wasn't great, but the code was finally merged
+in the application some time later.
+
+Since then I could say I code almost everyday and I've been studying many
+languages more but, at that time, I was relatively new to programming and
+computers.
+
+With all this I mean:
+
+> If you are interested, try. Everything is going to be fine. You don't need to
+> be a genius[^3].
+
+[You can check the contribution
+here](https://git.reviewboard.kde.org/r/118256/diff/2#index_header).
+
+Love.
+
+Ekaitz
+
+[^1]: It's a great book, by the way. You can find it
+  [online](https://mentorembedded.github.io/advancedlinuxprogramming/).
+
+[^2]: When I studied, right before the [Bolognia
+  Process](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process), the university was 5
+  years long for a Masters Degree and 3 for a Bachelor Degree.
+
+[^3]: But congratulations if you are, that way you'll learn faster and probably
+  have more reach if you want to.