My good friend recently sent me a link to some articles about Linux programming. I read them and realized, wow, this is great writing. I checked out the website that had these articles and it turned out it had hundreds of programming articles and tutorials. This blog is named catonmat.net.
Here is how I discovered this amazing developer blog.
My friend and I, being good friends, share an intimate passion for coding, memes and good food. To be honest I’m a very inexperienced newbie at programming as compared to him but despite the steep learning curve, I love learning new things, solving puzzles and doing math exercises. This love for puzzles often means that we share a lot of online resources with each other and my learning curve could sure use some professional guidance laid out in a fun and easy to understand way. Most people who start out coding often drop out because it requires a lot of time and patience. It is specially a difficult task for people like me who are passionate about how stuff works but don’t have quite enough time to embrace coding full on. So one fine day he told me, hey check out this site and tell me what you think! After I’ve finished though a few articles, I realized that it was incredible. My friend said, why don’t we post a review for this and despite the fact that this would be my second website review, I stepped up to the task at hand in high spirits.
So what is catonmat.net?
Catonmat.net is the brainchild of Peter Krumins, a full time developer and the co-founder of Browserling and Testling. He is from San Jose and he is a programmer, white hat, Linux sysadmin and advisor at Hackers/Founders, world’s largest startup network. He has over 15 years of experience in 7 different organizations and started his first online company way back in 1999. Despite the extensive CV, this blog is relatively very easy to understand and get around. It aims to teach newbies and advanced users the very fundamentals and advanced techniques of getting started with code. Peter has a special approach to getting things done quickly which he calls “the hacker’s approach“. He states that this approach allows him to create interactive and cool content very quickly and although people state shun this practice, he says otherwise. The blog’s relative ease of use meant that even newbies like me had no problem whatsoever finding helpful content. The sitemap enables one to find anything relevant rather quickly without muss fuss. And it’s not just limited to coders and internet pro’s, in fact anyone can find something of use in the blog; speaks miles about versatility and targeted the audience. Thanks to my friend, I managed to stumble upon probably one of the best blog’s that I have ever come across in my time with the Internet.
A bit more about the blog
The blog aims to educate people about programming and web development from a fun perspective. He created it because there was nothing that could capture a reader’s imagination extensively and make them love the way of the source code. The blog is a huge hit among the people who follow it regularly and love it with intricate adoration. He has included a huge library of programming lectures, resources, toolkits, hack sheets, vulnerabilities for many languages and programs and also the UNIX section is something else, unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. He also posts his findings and research to his personal space at Github for others to take a look. He also has a projects section on his blog that is updated regularly. He has basically created a blog that has everything that you need to know if you’re interested in programming or hacking.
Public Interactions and Interviews
Peter has been interviewed by many a websites and people, notably Fog Creek and Code Project where he talks extensively about his life and his love for computers and programming. He tells us that his love for computers began at a very early age and that he first encountered computers at an age of 6. He also highlights that Testling and Browserling are his biggest projects and urges people to have a look. He also writes books and his latest book is a volume on Bash and has published three volumes on the essential tools of UNIX Awk, Sed and Perl.
In his interviews he also mentions that he got his first computer on 2001 and since then he has learned an array of languages like Pascal, HTML, JavaScript, C and Visual Basic. Peter also mentions that he is an individual programmer and doesn’t operate on the norms of a community. He likes getting things done and moves on to another challenge and also urges others to do the same. Getting stuck in communities is not for him. He hates group thinking.
Summing Up!
Catomat certainly is very interesting site for the budding developer and also for the more experienced users. It is an educational craftsmanship of unmatched versatility and interactive content that has managed to grab interest for people like me with limited time and resources. The site certainly has a rich archive of immaculate documentation related to programing and hacks that is prone to grab interest of anyone who reads it. And now that we reach the end of the review, I’ll end by saying that Peter’s story has certainly done a lot to move me and motivate me to becoming a good developer. In my opinion it’s the best developer blog in the world. So go on – open up Cat-On-Mat and subscribe!
