On Sun, Aug 9, 2009 at 6:43 PM, Brian McLinden<brian.mclinden@gmail.com> wrote:
3. YOUR advice for a would be hacker?
I wonder how folks in this forum might vary from the following position. Would you prioritize or sequence things differently?
“Start out by learning bash, then set up your own Unix environment. This is a biggie. PC-BSD works fine. Learn to use it for your everyday tasks, learn how to administrate it and keep it up to date and secure. Then, when you've done that, start in with Python. Solve the Project Euler problems in whatever language you're learning. Learn which languages are better suited for particular problems. Learn about security in programs, vulnerabilities and how to exploit them. Read other people's code and post your own. Learn the low-level stuff later.”
A starting hacker probably has some idea of the sort of problem they want to solve. Based on the type of problem you are looking to solve someone could steer you toward a choice of languages that try to solve such problems. There are 'introduction to programming' books for most programming languages and in some cases they might be found on line. If one is learning programming as a hobby then I would say learn about the stuff that interests you and follow your nose. Read from books and on line sources. Learn at least one programming language very well. Above all else spend a lot of time writing code - it is a skill after all. I've been meaning to put together a introduction presentation to the python language, but other priorities have my time right now. :-(