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What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

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Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#31

Post by comatose_kid »

SwellJoe wrote: post #16

As others have said, start writing code, immediately. I mean right now. Like, this second. Stop reading right here. Open a programming tutorial website and start coding. I mentioned ADUni above. It's a great way to spend part of your first six months of learning. I've been a hacker since I was eight (I went the Commodore 64 route someone else mentioned starting in 1981, but I don't recommend that path for anyone...Op…

A bit of an aside, but I too was an Amiga user back in the day. Bought an Amiga 2000 in 1987. I recall reading the hardware reference manual and programming the blitter in 68K assembly. Those were the days :)

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#33

Post by litepost »

timg wrote: post #6
CYCY wrote: post #2

What is the fastest way to learn "hacking" to a reasonable level such that you can apply for YC? Of course, you need a product/idea to apply, but what will be the fastest way to acquire the necessary skill such that you can build a reasonably good product / to actualize your idea? Finding a hacker co-founder is a shortcut but it is not considered an answer here. I want to have a full schedule, e.g. firstly read this…

Your acceptance is based entirely on your idea (even though ideas are worth "nothing," heh) and your past projects. So learn some lisp to score brownie points and outsource a resume-filler project of your design to some cheep foreigners. You'll be ready to go. As for hacking in general. The only way to learn is to create real programs. Books are a very small part of learning. I wouldn't recommend any. Oh and don't te…

the bogus elitism in this community is truly astounding, symptoms of a deeply-held inferiority complex

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#34

Post by jwecker »

abstractbill wrote: post #8
CYCY wrote: post #2

What is the fastest way to learn "hacking" to a reasonable level such that you can apply for YC? Of course, you need a product/idea to apply, but what will be the fastest way to acquire the necessary skill such that you can build a reasonably good product / to actualize your idea? Finding a hacker co-founder is a shortcut but it is not considered an answer here. I want to have a full schedule, e.g. firstly read this…

I'd start with the video lectures of SICP: http://swiss.csail.mit.edu/classes/6.001/abelson-sussman-lectures/ After that you'd probably want to learn some web stuff like html, css and javascript. You can pick these up by looking at the sources of other peoples' pages, and by using w3schools: http://www.w3schools.com/ Good luck!

Great suggestion. I would add (and this is if you want to become a hacker, not a code monkey or script kiddie or whatever else), The Little Schemer, and then something functional- I'd recommend a book that's not even published yet, http://pragmaticprogrammer.com/titles/jaerlang/index.html

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#35

Post by Tichy »

JohnN wrote: post #20
CYCY wrote: post #2

What is the fastest way to learn "hacking" to a reasonable level such that you can apply for YC? Of course, you need a product/idea to apply, but what will be the fastest way to acquire the necessary skill such that you can build a reasonably good product / to actualize your idea? Finding a hacker co-founder is a shortcut but it is not considered an answer here. I want to have a full schedule, e.g. firstly read this…

Do you want to be a "hacker" or do you just wanna be able to build web apps. i dont think they are the same thing. I am not a hacker but I am learning to build Web Apps. For example I dont need to know how to build enterprise wide software. I spoke to a few friends of mine who can "hack". I said I wanna be able to build web apps they said learn the following and I am. 1. (X)HTML and CSS 2. A tiny bit of Javascript 3.…

Why learn PHP if you are going to learn RoR anyway? I think you could take a shortcut to RoR.

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#36

Post by SwellJoe »

pc wrote: post #30
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

As others have said, start writing code, immediately. I mean right now. Like, this second. Stop reading right here. Open a programming tutorial website and start coding. I mentioned ADUni above. It's a great way to spend part of your first six months of learning. I've been a hacker since I was eight (I went the Commodore 64 route someone else mentioned starting in 1981, but I don't recommend that path for anyone...Op…

s/DLT Scheme/PLT Scheme

Quite right. Thanks for noticing. Fixed.

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#37

Post by SwellJoe »

comatose_kid wrote: post #31
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

As others have said, start writing code, immediately. I mean right now. Like, this second. Stop reading right here. Open a programming tutorial website and start coding. I mentioned ADUni above. It's a great way to spend part of your first six months of learning. I've been a hacker since I was eight (I went the Commodore 64 route someone else mentioned starting in 1981, but I don't recommend that path for anyone...Op…

A bit of an aside, but I too was an Amiga user back in the day. Bought an Amiga 2000 in 1987. I recall reading the hardware reference manual and programming the blitter in 68K assembly. Those were the days :)

Yep, those were the horrible horrible days. I loved my Amiga. Really, really loved my Amiga. But programming today is so much better than programming back then. And everything that was good about the Amiga community is great about the Linux, Ruby, Python, Perl, etc. communities today.

Amiga E and C with DICE were both hard slogs for me (my high school had BASIC classes and an AP Pascal class, still taught on Apple IIe computers--but I took them for the easy A rather than actually learning anything...from day one I knew more about software development than the instructor). ARexx was easier to grasp for someone who cut his teeth on writing games for the Color 64 BBS system (in BASIC). I also did a little 6510 assembly, but that was really unpleasant after the initial coolness factor wore off (and I embody one of Larry Wall's three virtues: Laziness, so the coolness wore off just about immediately). But, compared to Perl, Python, Ruby, Lisp, Scheme, etc. plus the resources available to everyone on the Internet, I'm kinda sad to think back on how much time I wasted slogging through poorly written books about poorly written compilers. If only I'd known to seek out K&R early on. (I knew enough to want the Amiga 3000UX when it came out, but I wasn't quite sure why!). What was a nerdy kid in the suburbs in the poor southeast to do?

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#38

Post by SwellJoe »

litepost wrote: post #33
timg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your acceptance is based entirely on your idea (even though ideas are worth "nothing," heh) and your past projects. So learn some lisp to score brownie points and outsource a resume-filler project of your design to some cheep foreigners. You'll be ready to go. As for hacking in general. The only way to learn is to create real programs. Books are a very small part of learning. I wouldn't recommend any. Oh and don't te…

the bogus elitism in this community is truly astounding, symptoms of a deeply-held inferiority complex

Could you clarify how that relates to the parent? (The parent was wrong on at least two counts, but not due to bogus elitism that I could detect.)

Re: What is your recommended beginner's hacker training course?

#40

Post by reitzensteinm »

As much as I think SwellJoe has nailed the answer to this question, I can't help but think I disagree with the premise. If you've never coded before, I would suggest that you ask yourself a very difficult question - how do you know that you want to become a great hacker?

Now, I don't consider myself a great hacker (I honestly don't know how good I am, and I question anyone that would tell you otherwise), but I do believe I know a bit about how I learned and can offer some advice.

Follow your natural curiosity, step by step. That's it. If you have questions, answer them. If you wonder how is done, try to build it or create it yourself and find out - if you can't do it yet, pick off a smaller piece of the problem you're interested in. If there's some assertion in a field that you disagree with, try to prove it wrong, because either you'll learn that you're wrong (likely) or you'll contribute something to the field (unlikely, but possible). Either way you win.

But the key here is, just follow your curiosity wherever it goes. It won't necessarily be towards becoming a hacker. If you find yourself delaying code that you know needs to be written in your plan to become a hacker by slacking off and reading up on organic chemistry all day, then that's not actually slacking off - that's telling you something.

I don't think there are many people on this planet that can truly be great at more than one thing. Feynman was, for instance, but I don't think I've ever met anyone in person. If you find yourself trying to become a hacker as a 'day job' but you do rocket science for fun, well, I'm sorry, but chances are you'd make a great rocket scientist but a lousy hacker and you're going against your own nature to try to become what you aren't.

But the key thing about simply following your curiosity is that you'll end up finding something that you are good at, you enjoy, and if you're at all smart you'll eventually become world class at it. If you are right about wanting to be a hacker, you will get there! You may have to have a day job while you figure out what you really want to become, but there are worse things.

Sorry, I'm ranting a bit... but I hope this helps.

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