Silk Road forums
Discussion => Security => Topic started by: HeatFireFlame on May 19, 2013, 09:42 pm
-
Hey all, Now im fairly up to scratch with basic cryptography and anonymity, enough to keep myself anonymous in general. However i would like to start getting a bit more up to date with coding, programming and the likes.
Now i would ask you should i basically be learning HTML,APACHE or UNIX? I know their is a good guide to learning at W3schools. But im looking for the book A+ certification as apparently it's something you need to read when starting out. Does anyone know where i can find a free version of this book?(even a pdf file)
also does anyone have any recommendations for getting started out with programming, I mean from scratch, Consider i know nothing, Right from the ground up;.Where would i start? To get a basic knowledge of the workings of Pc's,(i already know basics of this but would like to recap really) programming and coding.
Thanks all.
-
I don't think you need A+ certification. If you're interested in programming for practical reasons then I suggest "Learn Python The Hard Way", then find yourself a project that interests you and is written in Python.
Read the project's source code, hang out in their chat room and get advice from people who are great programmers, fix some bugs in the code, help other users and so on. This will be much more interesting than reading stuffy text books or doing pointless certification, you'll be solving real world problems that you actually care about.
-
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
-
I don't think you need A+ certification. If you're interested in programming for practical reasons then I suggest "Learn Python The Hard Way", then find yourself a project that interests you and is written in Python.
Read the project's source code, hang out in their chat room and get advice from people who are great programmers, fix some bugs in the code, help other users and so on. This will be much more interesting than reading stuffy text books or doing pointless certification, you'll be solving real world problems that you actually care about.
Thanks mate il be sure to DL it . yeah i have been told already quite a few times now A+ isnt actually needed. Il update t let you know how i get on if i can remember :P
Where can i find good projects type thing mate?? I knew there was something out there like this but never really found anything,
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
Yeah no problem il let you know when its finished ;D ;D
-
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
Yeah no problem il let you know when its finished ;D ;D
That's an insane first challenge, you know... how about this one -- write a Python script that just plain connects to the web site and dumps out the front page. The guy wants to learn how to swim, not how to drown :P
-
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
Yeah no problem il let you know when its finished ;D ;D
That's an insane first challenge, you know... how about this one -- write a Python script that just plain connects to the web site and dumps out the front page. The guy wants to learn how to swim, not how to drown :P
I wouldn't even suggest doing a Tor project as a first one, it's lots of suffering for very little reward. Getting Python to connect to Tor is a huge pain, you'll either have to write a downloader yourself or monkey-patch urllib to download stuff via a socks proxy, then deal with slow and intermittent Tor websites etc etc. Monkey-patching, TCP sockets and exception handling aren't day 1 topics.
Best to stick to something really simple that works on a file for input and a file for output, maybe try some of the Google Code Jam qualifier problems to get the creative juices flowing!
-
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
Yeah no problem il let you know when its finished ;D ;D
That's an insane first challenge, you know... how about this one -- write a Python script that just plain connects to the web site and dumps out the front page. The guy wants to learn how to swim, not how to drown :P
LOl i was kidding about letting him know when it was done, Im just learning the utmost basics at the moment, Hell SS look at thee grammatical errors i made in my OP in another thread before you corrected me haha. Hopefullt though i will get there.
First Coding Challenge: write a Python script that scrapes the SR web site for all vendor keys and saves them in a text file.
Yeah no problem il let you know when its finished ;D ;D
That's an insane first challenge, you know... how about this one -- write a Python script that just plain connects to the web site and dumps out the front page. The guy wants to learn how to swim, not how to drown :P
I wouldn't even suggest doing a Tor project as a first one, it's lots of suffering for very little reward. Getting Python to connect to Tor is a huge pain, you'll either have to write a downloader yourself or monkey-patch urllib to download stuff via a socks proxy, then deal with slow and intermittent Tor websites etc etc. Monkey-patching, TCP sockets and exception handling aren't day 1 topics.
Best to stick to something really simple that works on a file for input and a file for output, maybe try some of the Google Code Jam qualifier problems to get the creative juices flowing!
I am literally right at the beggining of it all, so writing ym own programs aint viable just yet ...Long way from TCP sockets etc, I will get there, but not today lol. Walk before i can run type thing.
Yeah il look those up, thanks for the advice mate :)
-
I'd start out learning how to structure IF, AND, OR, THEN, ELSE, ELSEIF statements for whatever language you want to learn. Play with strings, learn how to replace a pattern of characters in a string, then eventually learn how to split a string into an array. Take it one step at a time.
Consider sticking to a C based language so you can adapt your skills easily to other C based languages. I found that out the hard way, I started out with Visual Basic back in the AOL days, but the language is formatted very differently than others, it took me awhile to touch PHP. After learning PHP, I was able to write java with little effort and can read many other languages.
-
I am literally right at the beggining of it all, so writing ym own programs aint viable just yet ...Long way from TCP sockets etc, I will get there, but not today lol. Walk before i can run type thing.
Don't be afraid to set a task for yourself that you don't know how to accomplish. If you already knew how to accomplish it, what would you be learning from it in the first place...? :)
By the way, TCP sockets are just things you talk to the internet through. If you want to get data from a website, you "open" a TCP socket to the web site's address, and then you read & write to the TCP socket and the web site does the same thing on the other end. That's how you pass data back and forth. That's how your web browser is getting these words right now -- through a TCP socket. It isn't as complicated as it sounds. Well, not in a high level language like Python or Ruby anyway...
-
I am literally right at the beggining of it all, so writing ym own programs aint viable just yet ...Long way from TCP sockets etc, I will get there, but not today lol. Walk before i can run type thing.
Don't be afraid to set a task for yourself that you don't know how to accomplish. If you already knew how to accomplish it, what would you be learning from it in the first place...? :)
By the way, TCP sockets are just things you talk to the internet through. If you want to get data from a website, you "open" a TCP socket to the web site's address, and then you read & write to the TCP socket and the web site does the same thing on the other end. That's how you pass data back and forth. That's how your web browser is getting these words right now -- through a TCP socket. It isn't as complicated as it sounds. Well, not in a high level language like Python or Ruby anyway...
Ahh Thanks SS, It actually is quite simple when you put it that way. I always find it easier to learn from a person than a book, I get to a certain point with books where i understand etc but i always learn a lot faster with people to help me out. Really thanks for it all.
Thanks everybody for your help. You are all stars .
-
I wouldn't waste my time (or yours in this case) reading any A+ or N+ cert info.
Their are sooo many Unix for beginner type books. Even the 'dummies' guide books are pretty good.
Would also recommend you get a CCNA book (CCNA is one of the first Cisco certs). Just read the first couple of chapters that explain networking (including TCP/UDP) and stop when they start to get into configuring cisco routers.. unless that interests you, then keep reading :)
Their are books on just apache as well.. but thats overkill..
As the others have said with Unix (or anything in general really) its best to have a project in mind. Even if its just like running your own email and web server to start off with. Then get a free domain and get it all online and working. It also helps 1000000% more to have something in mind when you start programming, doesn't matter how basic it is. For me.. If I just read the books and do the examples included in each chapter, once you get to the end its like "eeeh what now".
Even just a simple script to parse your web server logs and pull out all the IP addresses that have visited, count them etc etc, maybe figure out the most popular pages people go to on your site would be a good start. It has all the functions you'd be using later on for more advanced stuff.
And yeah I'd do python or perl.. Wouldn't bother with visual basic or anything windows-ish if your wanting to do Unix at the same time.
Thepiratebay should pretty have every book you'd need..
Just out of interest are you looking to further your skills for a career or just a hobby ?
-
For learning many varieties of web programming languages, I heartily recommend codeacademy. I did a few of their modules in school to brush up on languages I haven't touched in a while and it was a great help. w3schools is good for basics of web design and scripting as well but I got more out of it when I used codeacademy. Unless you are looking to land a job, the compTIA certifications (A+, Net+, Linux+ etc) are not going to be all that useful.