About
It has been years since I used a nickname. Safigo is a name introduced by my creative wife, and I liked it so much that I decided to use it as my online alias.
Why not my real name? I used it for years, but my full name isn’t the easiest for people to remember or pronounce. Safigo, on the other hand, is short, catchy, and easy to type.
How Programming Found Me
I wrote my first program in C during middle school after a friend showed me a programming book. I remember it like it was yesterday: writing simple terminal-based converters for Kelvin to Celsius, Fahrenheit to Celsius, and so on.
I was amazed that I could write a program, share it, and have my friends actually use it. Even though it was just a terminal program, I had a few friends who knew how to run it and shared my excitement. At the time, I didn’t understand what dynamic libraries are, which led to many failed attempts to fix “program won’t run” errors on my friends’ computers.
Since then, it has been a long journey of learning and exploring. I’ve gone through many languages and tools. It was a slightly unusual path, but I enjoyed every step of it1:
- C, C++
- UoPilot, Autoit, AutoHotkey (I was a big fan of automation, but everything started with Ultima Online)
- Assembler (I loved Flat Assembler)
- Scripting languages like Python, JavaScript, Lua, PHP, etc.
- Java, C#
- Go, Rust
Surprisingly, while I really enjoyed Borland C++ Builder, other popular languages like Visual Basic, Visual Studio, and Delphi never clicked with me.
Linux Journey
My journey with Linux followed a similar winding path. I started on Windows. I’d seen RedHat and Slackware on the administrator machines at local internet cafés, but I never had access to them.
Later, a friend gave me a CD with openSUSE (SUSE Linux 9.3), but I didn’t really appreciate it at the time. Soon after, that same friend introduced me to Gentoo Linux. The idea of compiling my own programs was fascinating. I didn’t fully understand what all the terminal output meant or why I needed to compile everything from scratch, but it made me feel like I was in a hacker movie.
I eventually realized that while compiling is fun, it is also painfully slow. I started looking around and landed back on openSUSE. It wasn’t purely a technical choice, there was a warm, supportive community around it that helped me feel comfortable. I stayed with it for a couple of years, and it was a great experience I brought to my corporate computer as well.
The logical next step for me was trying to write my own OS in assembler, inspired by projects like KolibriOS (a fork of MenuetOS). After many experiments, and just as many mistakes, I finally got my first OS to boot and display text on the screen. It forced me to learn low-level concepts like memory management, hardware interrupts, and file systems.
Even though I’ve used macOS for the last seven years2, Linux never really left me. Recently, I started daily-driving Linux again. After hopping between Ubuntu, Mint, openSUSE, and Fedora, I finally fell in love with Arch Linux. Maybe it’s my old Gentoo experience, but aside from some installation quirks (setting up Secure Boot was tricky), I don’t experience the negatives people usually associate with Arch. It’s slim, straightforward, and does exactly what I tell it to do.
Here We Are
I’ve tried writing articles on social networks in the past, but I never felt comfortable with the format and couldn’t stay consistent.
That’s why I decided to build this blog. I just want a space to be myself. No AI, no marketing, no SEO games, no clickbait. Just my thoughts, my workspace, and hopefully some useful content for people who care about the same things I do.
I’d love to hear from you! You can find my contact info in the footer.