Does anyone else here participate in the selfhosting hobby without a formal IT related education or a career in a similar field? I’ve only had one or two programming courses as part of my university education, but it was only very basic Python and C. I’ve never formally learned how to use containers, version control or anything else. Sometimes I regret not pursuing an education in IT/programming because there are so many things I’d like to accomplish but can’t (for example if there’s a feature missing in some project, or to feel safe in my abilities to harden my servers and my network in order to expose services to the open internet).
Well, I’ve had a computer in front of me since the 70s. Don’t conflate longevity with knowledge tho. I’ve had no formal training, even tho I ‘ran’ the IT dept for a small construction company in another life. One of my jobs was to train old head construction workers on how to use a lap top, a digital camera, how to interface with our servers to upload data from the field. That was wild.
But, no formal training here. Most of what I know I learned by: Reading, screwing it up, doing it again, ad nauseam. And then when something worked, write that shit down.
Great post. For those who don’t know, breaking shit is a good way to learn.
I have no formal training but have been in IT for over thirty years.
No formal training only help from self hosting community 🤟
I was that guy. And then ended up with that career partly because of it.
I have no formal training and work in real estate so I’ve taught myself GNU/Linux CLI commands, docker and basic networking stuff with the help of the Internet, YouTube and some LLM assistance. I now self-host around a dozen services via docker on an old Dell XPS laptop for myself. This did lead me to consider a career change and I applied for and got into a free study course for the CompTIA Network+ and Security+ certificates so we’ll see if that ends up just becoming extra help for my hobby or a means to get into IT more broadly.
I was working in sales when I started self hosting like a decade ago. But the things I taught myself then led me to a career in data analysis. Same company.
Ive been self hosting for years, have a 24/7/365 web server public facing, with 20+ services hosted, including a Lemmy instance. No formal education, qualification or any actual experience in any way. Never had a single course or anything. I work as a commercial manager on complex and large infrastructure construction and engineering projects.
I used to work as an electrician in the automation industry (robots that welded the frame of automobiles) but I was only an apprentice. I worked alongside robot and PLC programmers and absorbed information through them. I lost the motivation to finish my apprenticeship due to a changed perspective on the harmful affects of too much progress. That was as close as I got to any coding.
I decided to enjoy a mid-life retirement after protesting my way into getting fired which gave me time to explore hobbies. Along the way I ended up buying a used Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 and found some joy in both self hosting and shell scripting. Fortunately shell scripting supplements self hosting. I have been slowly crafting a low resource, low maintenance, minimal server.
Both Pi’s run Alpine Linux, the Pi 4 is dedicated to HomeAssistant which controls a handful of lights and switches. The Pi 5 runs Caddy and Kiwix. Right now it just hosts a bunch of wikis and a static file server with Caddy. Eventually I plan to run a blog created only by a single Bash script.
This is all completely outside of any workplace skill and I think I’d like to keep it that way. Programming for money would likely kill the wonder I still have for computers.
- Buy books
- Read
A “formal education” mostly involves reading a book. These books can be identified, purchaed, and read without enrolling in any course.
I have a whole shelf full of text books for IT degrees and certifications. Despite never enrolling in any classes, amazingly, the books still allowed me to read them.
The only formal training I had was 20 years ago in high school when I took a pair of A+ and Networking certification electives. At the time I wanted to get into Systems Administration as a career, but no one was hiring when I graduated. Went into trucking instead.
20 years on though, I don’t really consider selfhosting a hobby, but rather the most cost effective way to achieve whatever I’m trying to accomplish for my family or myself. SAAS and subscriptions have kinda gotten out of hand, so I’ve “voted with my wallet” and just done them myself.
Mostly. I pay for email. That was a pain in the ass.
Do I still enjoy it, sure. But that’s has become secondary as my objectives have shifted over the years.
Starting to mess around with selfhosting, no IT background but grew up on computers.
Ah, self-taught. The slowest, most difficult way.
…hm, knee jerked a little, but you are right, it is a slow and difficult route. Perhaps sometimes also the most thorough, surprising, or rewarding way ? not sure tbh…
I do. I have no IT background whatsoever. Just interest and ADHD.
I do have formal education in the field, but that doesn’t mean that I’m easily capable of e.g. writing a module for Nginx or even most website frameworks or knowledgable enough about administration to feel comfortable exposing a dynamic website (as opposed to static HTML+CSS) to the internet.
A lot of it is learning by doing, though, and for a lot of things books are a great resource (some stuff is outdated as soon as it’s published, but general system administration or programming knowledge doesn’t get outdated that fast).
I started both around the same time. I switched careers from being a chef at a pretty high level. Started getting into systems and got engrossed in it. So the selfhosting was just an aspect of my education.
Me too. I do not work in IT, I do not even work at a computer.
Started installing first ripped Windows, later Linux on handmedown laptops starting around 2010.
And tweaking the shit out of it, later also to escape the Googleverse.
Selfhosting since 2014.
I can’t do everything either but I’m confident enough to let my server face the world. It doesn’t take all that much knowledge, mostly common sense.
I guess there’s some secondary knowledge, like knowing where to find useful instructions (archwiki) or knowing that Linux software often (but not always) doesn’t bother with sane defaults.
If this narrative seems to be coming from the prehistoric past then there’s your answer: give it more time. Do what you can do now, and surely your knowledge/capability will grow. Esp. tweaking Linux!
