My first Personal Computer

Let's Start with the time when I got my first Laptop or a Personal Computer (in general).

I got my first Personal Computer (PC) when I was on final year of high school (12th Grade) in 2012. And at that time all I used my laptop was to watch movies, listen music and sometimes MS Office.

There's was no good internet connection. Very few people had internet connection in their houses. So we used to go to Cyber to use internet (mostly facebook and download songs from YouTube). We could use internet on our phones (GPRS not 3G) but was expensive.

After completing my High School (i.e. 12th Grade), I decided to join Bachelors in Information Technology for my undergraduate studies. It was a suggestion from a colleague and counseling at education fair (There's a long story behind choosing Bsc.IT for undergraduate, will share someday).

Before joining undergraduate studies, I had no any prior information or knowledge about any IT courses (like programming, networking or multimedia). So I was introduced to different programming languages during my undergraduate studies starting from 2013.

So, the first programming I learnt was C programming, then later I was introduced to PHP, Asp.net, Java, etc. Along with these programming tutorials I was introduced to different database technologies like Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle.

As I was not familiar with any of these tech stuffs, I had difficulty on understanding the logics and practice on my own. And during that time we had to completely depend on our teachers/lecturers, no matter whether they were good or bad.

Self-Learning Options

So, I decided to learn on my own. And the options available for me to self-learn during that time were

1. Buy Paper Books: First I tried to learn on my own by buying books. During that time, tech books were rarely available in Nepal. Though they were available, they were pretty expensive and not interactive. So this option was not so feasible.

2. Interact and Learn with Colleague (Friend): The second option, to learn with a friend was really fun and interactive. But we were living apart, so it was also not feasible to catch up regularly and study together.

3. Use Internet (YouTube and Google): This option of learning via internet seems the most feasible one these days as we have internet with the speed in Mbps. But during those times I had 128 Kbps internet which was not even enough to buffer YouTube video and play seamlessly. Beside this, the tutorials during those days were not much based on project creation. There were tutorial videos which would show us only the basic stuffs like, how to create class? what is object? what is OOP? etc.
   So, I had really hard times to complete the assignment to complete my undergraduate studies due to the lack of resources.

And during 1 month festival vacation, we used to visit our parents in rural villages of my country. And we did not have internet on those locations. But I did not want to waste 1 month time. So, I found a way to learn offline in my village. For that I used to download/clone my favorite website like W3Schools, Tutorial Points, etc. and make it available offline and learn while I was on vacation.

So these were the hard ways for me to learn programming languages. But if you're reading this article, then you're really fortunate because you have really good internet and really good internet connection to read this article and watch tutorials on YouTube.

World Internet Users in Mid 2019 (Only 50%)

But there are still many students/peoples out there in the world who do not have access to the internet and gadgets like you. But they want to learn new things whenever possible. So If I and you make videos full of knowledge and information what we know then they can watch and learn whenever they will have internet connection.

College Incidents (Mostly Bad)

Also when I was in college I had couple of bad incidents. Like, One day when I was just getting to know about programming languages, one of the network teacher brought a term called "PHP". And I had no idea about "PHP", so I asked "Sir what is PHP?.

He stayed silent for a while and replied "PHP is a scripting language.". That's it not an another extra word. And he wasn't joking. This reaction made me learn PHP by myself any how and learnt as well.

And another incident was on couple of months back. Now, I'm doing my Master's in IT and already familiar with different database technologies like SQL Server, MySQL and Oracle. But one teacher was teaching about the advanced database, So I asked with curiosity "Sir What do you think what database facebook uses?".

And Like previous teacher this one also replied "Why don't you go and ask Mark Zuckerberg?". I did not expect this from him. So from that day I stopped relying on college teachers. Instead started learning from e-learning platforms like YouTube and Udemy.

With Gaurav Sen at Tech Event in Kathmandu

In this process, I even met a System Design YouTuber Gaurav Sen. And I learnt better from him than my college/university teachers. I also got a chance to met him personally as he was in Kathmandu for a tech event.

Inspired from these online tutors, I also wanted to share what I have learnt. So I started to make tutorial videos on YouTube. I am not a master or a Guru, but I will always share what I have learnt and make it available for FREE.

Though there were not so good teachers, there were really good ones as well. Like Vinay Sonu Sir was the one who taught me the fundamentals of database and system design. Bishwo Adhikari Sir taught me C# programming language, Event Driven Programming and Web Development with Asp.net in 3-tier architecture that I teach in my YouTube tutorial projects. Also Dibya Tara Shakya Maam taught me advanced database like performance tuning, query optimization and database security.

In short, Following are the reasons for me to make YouTube tutorials

1. I don't want to suffer like me to learn programming languages
2. Share what I have learnt, make better courses and make available to everyone and FREE or cost
3. Have Fun: Share experiences with each other and learn

Thank You So Much for Reading this article. If you think education must be FREE for all, then don't forget to SHARE.

New Tutorial Series Coming Soon

1. Creating Secure Web application with Oracle Apex
2. Finance Tracker Application in C#

Join Me on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/vijaythapa

Most Popular Tutorial Series I have already created

1. Billing System in C#
2. E-Contact: Simple Desktop Application
3. Blood Bank Management System in C# Simple Music Player App

Feel free to SHARE and LIKE, if you believe in FREE education for all.