During my third year as an undergraduate, something spectacular happened; the school management installed free WiFi in the hostel where I resided. It was unbelievable. I spent several hours everyday doing the things I loved the most on the internet: reading Quora (I had an obsession back then), downloading the latest movies (not anymore), and of course, downloading programming videos from youtube channels. At this point, I can only remember thenewboston but there were several others. Of course, as with anything that comes free, people tend to be excessive.
I was what you would call a bandwidth thug which roughly means someone who takes from the internet and doesn’t contribute to it. Unfortunately, after all these years I don’t think I have dropped this title. There was a period when I actively tried to contribute something meaningful to the programming community. I was active on stackoverflow asking and answering as many questions as I could. Going by how much I had learnt from people who made their content free and accessible for anyone with an internet connection, I knew had to contribute. I still do.
I understand there are several ways to contribute these days (open source, Q&A, blogging etc.) but I haven’t made much use of them since those years when I was active on stackoverflow. Therefore, once again I am making a commitment to contribute to the internet and I have chosen blogging as a means (at least for now).