Week 1: Figuring out what I got myself into

The first week of my transition into cloud engineering flew by faster than I expected—and not just because of the tech.

Between some lingering work commitments, celebrating my 30th birthday, and finally getting a bit of downtime with my wife (our first since the wedding!), life kept me plenty busy. Combine that with Serbia’s record-breaking heat wave, and you’ve got the perfect storm for... well, not exactly peak productivity.

Even so, I made progress.

I squeezed in a few tutorials, read some insightful articles, and checked in with a few friends and colleagues already in tech. Everyone echoed the same advice: start with Linux. So I did. I fired up Pop!_OS on my “new” old T480s and dove headfirst into the terminal.

As someone raised on Windows for gaming and macOS for design work, Linux felt foreign - at first, intimidating. The Internet doesn’t help either; there’s no shortage of posts warning newcomers that Linux is difficult, cryptic, or just plain unfriendly.

But here’s the truth: once I got past the unfamiliarity, it started to make sense. Linux is like any other OS -until you open the terminal. That’s where the magic (and power) happens.

Now, for seasoned tech folks, working in the terminal is just Tuesday. But for me? Someone who’s spent most of his life building polished UIs using polished UIs? It felt like stepping into a whole new world.

It actually brought back memories of being a kid, trying to fix a driver issue on my family’s old PC using a command prompt I barely understood. I remember feeling like a hacker straight out of The Matrix. Honestly, the feeling hasn’t changed much - I still don’t know what I’m doing half the time, but it feels awesome.

After the novelty wore off, I got serious. I started taking notes, documenting what I was learning, and journaling the process. I worked through basic terminal commands—ls, cd, mv, cp, and so on—while getting comfortable with Linux’s file structure.

Then came file permissions, symbolic links, and file types. That part took some time to click, especially since there’s no real equivalent in my previous experience on macOS or Windows. But with some repetition, it started to stick.

And then something unexpected happened: I fell in love with networking.

I started reading up on foundational concepts like the OSI model, ARP, DHCP, DNS, and the inner workings of the Internet itself. It filled in so many knowledge gaps I didn’t even realize I had - despite years of being a geek surrounded by IT-savvy friends.

Of everything I touched this week, networking stood out as the most fascinating. It made me realize how much of the digital world I’ve been using - but never truly understood.

Before I knew it, the week was over.

Looking ahead, I’m planning to dig deeper into Linux, explore more advanced commands, spin up a virtual machine, and continue exploring both security fundamentals and networking. I’ve also started dipping my toes into Bash and Python scripting - but that’ll definitely take more time to understand properly, so I’ll save those thoughts for a future post.

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading. Hope you’re enjoying the ride as much as I am.

The journey continues.