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).
No formal education in IT, I’m a GI surgeon.
I built my own gaming pc’s in mid-late 00s and i also knew some basic html just by the virtue of being on the internet as a kid and trolling at bulletin boards/trying to build some websites.
In 2018 i was miserable as a GP after finishing my medical decree. I was thinking about changing careers and I did most of the online version of Harwards CS50 course for fun. In the end i did become a surgeon and not an engineer.
In 2025 Trump II happened and seeing that the tech billionaires were in on it, I lost faith in the USA as a country. I wanted to get off all of my subscriptions and american big tech services, which I’m happy to say ive almost completely achieved. As i was searching for the best replacements for all the services I realized the cleanest and most future-proof path is to host my own.
I run nextcloud, immich, jellyfin, matrix, home assistant, paperless, ollama etc etc. There’s still a whatsapp account unfortunately. It is mirrored to my matrix instance so the (grapheneOS) phone i use daily doesnt have a whatsapp client but a matrix client instead. Nothing is happening on the phone whatsapp runs on.