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Ugh I've spent literally all day grinding away to learn PostgreSQL. It's so annoying, but also oddly satisfying.

I finally completed my next certification project for the fCC Relational Databases Certification, and I noticed that at one point my database said "moon moon" :P

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I'm off to a compassionate start!

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some advice i have for future computer science students

as soon as you learn data structures & complexity, run, don’t just walk, RUN to leetcode while the knowledge is still fresh in your mind. your entire career and whether you’ll get a well-paying job vs an average paying job depends on how good you are at leetcode.

build as many projects as you can, and i’m not talking tutorial projects that take a few hours, i’m talking big projects. working on a project for a month or two will get you really far.

if you don’t have an internship, do not waste your summers, learn new technologies, languages, concepts and build projects you can put in your cv.

try to participate in hackathons and coding competitions. it’s okay if you fail, but you’ll learn a lot.

learn how to read documentation. most tutorials don’t even cover a quarter of what a language, framework or software has to offer. the sooner you make reading documentation a habit, the better it is. and yes i know, documentation is long and hard to read. my advice is only read the sections that are relevant to you in the moment. something i also personally do is look at the code examples at the same time as i am reading the paragraphs, it really helps easily absorb the information.

try not to use chatgpt. and if you do, then at least use it for stuff you know you can do yourself and will be able to correct if the bot gets it wrong. using chatgpt is a very slippery slope and the more you use it the less you learn.

the math is important. math teaches you how to reason and how to develop better logical thinking. just because you don’t see yourself using the xyz theorem you’ve learnt anytime in the future doesn’t mean the math is useless.

be prepared to get comfortable with erros, issues, bugs and just problems in general. you’ll be coding 30% of the time and debugging 70% of the time (i’m exaggerating but sometimes it feels like this is the case lol), and that’s okay, it’s how we learn and the sooner you embrace it the better. if you’re someone who easily gets frustrated, then this is a heads up.

learn as you go. there is no such thing as waiting until you know everything before you start on a project. the only way and the best way to learn in this field is practice, so build, build, and build.

these are all the ones i could think of for now. feel free to comment your thoughts and questions <3

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Continuing to struggle with React and hate it so much, omfg. I wish I didn't have to pass this unit in order to pass the entire course. Vanilla JS makes sense to me, HTML makes sense to me, but this? This hybrid Frankenstein's-monster thing? My brain simply refuses to comprehend it. UGH

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I FINISHED IT :D :D :D

Yessssss I finally got my fCC JavaScript developer certification :')

Of course they decided to go ahead and release a whole new curriculum a few days before I wrapped this up, thus making this previous version now somewhat obsolete (great timing, folks), but I don't really mind – I was only doing it to learn the skills in any case.

In my final project I got to work with APIs again, which I hadn't done in ages and always enjoy, and I got some practice with asynchronous programming.

I'm so glad to have this DONE and finally be able to move on! Now the only question is, should I keep working my way through the old certifications or try out the new full-stack curriculum? I think I'll probably stick with the old individual certifications for now, because it looks like the new curriculum would take me back over HTML, CSS, and JS for the umpteenth time, and I am sick to death of them and would really prefer to move on to backend ASAP.

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I FIXED IT

omfg I've been working on a programming project all day and it is driving me BONKERINOS

I love coding but I also hate it so much :')

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omfg I've been working on a programming project all day and it is driving me BONKERINOS

I love coding but I also hate it so much :')

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Hey! This is very random, but I saw that you work in cyber security right now. I work in data science, but I'm really interested in cyber security and considering making a switch. I was wondering what kind of cybersecurity work you do, and what has been the most helpful for you to learn what you need for your job!

Hi! Cybersecurity is a really broad field, and you can do a lot of different things depending on what your interests are.

My work is mostly focused around automating things for security, since my background is in programming. Automation is really helpful for speeding up boring, monotonous tasks that need to get done, but don't necessarily need a human involved. A good example is automated phishing analysis, since phishing reports are a big chunk of the cases that security analysts have to deal with, and an analyst usually follows the same few steps at the beginning. Rather than someone having to manually check the reputation of the sender domain, check the reputation of any links, and all of that every single time, we can build tools to automatically scan for things like that and then present the info to the analyst. The whole idea here is to automate the boring data retrieval stuff, since computers are good at that, and give the analyst more time for decision-making and analysis, since humans are good at that.

If you're coming from data science, you might be interested in detection engineering. Cybersecurity is essentially a data problem - we have a ton of logs from a ton of different sources (internal logs, threat intelligence feeds, etc.) - how do we sort through that data to highlight things that we want to pay attention to, and how can we correlate events from different sources? If you're into software development or want to stay more on the data science side, maybe you could also look into roles for software development at companies that have SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) products - these are essentially the big log repositories that organizations rely on for correlation and alerting.

As for starting to learn security, my general go-to recommendation is to start looking through the material for the Security+ certification. For better or worse, certifications are pretty big in security, much more so than other tech fields (to my knowledge). I'm a bit more hesitant to recommend the Security+ now, since CompTIA (the company that offers it) was bought by a private equity company last year. Everyone is kind of expecting the prices to go up and the quality to go down. (The Security+ exam costs $404 USD as of writing this, and I think I took mine for like $135ish with a student discount in 2022). However, the Security+ is still the most well-known and comprehensive entry-level certification that I'm aware of. You can (and should) study for it completely for free - check out Professor Messer's training videos on YouTube. There are also plenty of books out there if that's more of your thing. I'd say to treat the Security+ as a way to get a broad overview of security and figure out what you don't know. (It's certainly not a magic ticket to a job, no matter what those expensive bootcamps will tell you.)

If you aren't familiar with networking, it's worth checking out Professor Messer's Network+ training videos as well. You don't need to know everything on there, but having an understanding of ports, protocols, and network components and design is super useful. I hear a lot that the best security folks are often the ones who come from IT or networking or similar and have a really solid understanding of the fundamentals and then get into security. Don't neglect the basics!

One thing that I'll also add, based on conversations I've had with folks in my network… getting a job in cybersecurity is harder now than it used to be, at least in the US (where I am). There are a ton of very well-qualified people who have been laid off who are now competing with people trying to get into the field in the first place, and with the wrecking ball that Elon is taking to the federal government (and by extension, government contractors) right now… it's hard. There's still a need for skilled folks in cyber, but you're going to run into a lot of those "5 years of experience required for this entry-level job" kind of job postings.

On a slightly happier note, another thing you should do if you want to get into cyber is to stay up to date with what's happening in the industry! I have a masterpost that has a section with some of my favorite news sources. The SANS Stormcast is a good place to start - it's a 5 minute podcast every weekday morning that covers most of the big things. Black Hills Infosec also does a weekly news livestream on YouTube that's similar (but longer and with more banter). Also, a lot of infosec folks hang out on Mastodon & in the wider fediverse. Let me know if you want some recs for folks to follow over there.

The nice thing about cybersecurity (and computer-related fields in general, I find) is that there are a ton of free resources out there to help you learn. Sometimes it's harder to find the higher-quality ones, but let me know if there are any topics you're interested in & I'll see what I can find. I have a few posts in my cybersecurity tag on here that might help.

Thank you for your patience, I know you sent this in over a week ago lol but life has been busy. Feel free to send any follow-up questions if you have any!

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I finished the telephone number validator certification project the other day (that was a great – and badly needed – regex brush-up) and today I blasted through the next lesson, which involved building an online shopping cart interface as a way to practice OOP.

This also meant returning to concepts I hadn't touched in aaaaaaages, such as object constructors, classes, "this", etc. I definitely noticed how rusty I'd gotten :/ But oh well, just gotta push myself through the rest of the JavaScript curriculum and get that certificate, so I can move onward and upward! To... what's next?

Oh. Front-end libraries. Sad trumpet noise. I had forgotten I still had to get through that too. The only thing more boring than doing "raw" front-end is using libraries to do it, if you ask me.

Luckily, I already completed most of that curriculum in the distant past, and I think my progress may have been saved, so hopefully I will be able to jet through it very rapidly so I can move onward and upward! To... data viz! Followed by relational databases! That's more like it :D

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I took a break from my studies over the holidays, but I'm back at it now and refreshing my memory about how currying works. This shit continues to blow my mind :0

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You, hey you. You right there. Amateur developer. Your stuff sucks right now doesn't it? Can't get a single project off the ground because you are still learning and you make a lot of dumb mistakes? And since you naturally want to be a good programmer, you want to start over and do it again but better?

Don't do that.

Whatever you have to do, I am BEGGING you. Finish that first project.

I want you to make it SUCK. I want the code to be a disaster. I want it to have bugs. I want it to have scrapped features that you just couldn't figure out. If you make it simple enough, a project held together with chewed gum and prayers, while not being a good or even competent it will be a finished one.

Why?

Because if you keep improving, but keep starting over. The logical end point is that you will be a good programmer with no finished projects. It's going to take YEARS. And eventually you will struggle to find motivation, burn out hard, take a SEVERAL month long break. Revaluate your whole life. And come to the stunning, crushing, horrifying realization that all those youtubers and influences you have watched that have told you to "start really really small". Were right.

Unfortunately, you are a good enough programmer that starting small isn't fun anymore. And actually FINISHING your first project is going to feel like pulling out your own teeth. And it's going to suck. And you are going to hate it.

And then you are going to attempt to warn others to skip all the hardship, tell them to start small. Start bad. Don't make the same mistake.

And hopefully, HOPEFULLY they will listen and go down the better path.

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this shit owns it's just a number go up idle game except the idle mechanic comes from you writing JavaScript to automate tasks it seems like the end goal of the game is to perfectly optimize against this little arbitrary system they've created. There's not any plot to speak of so far but even though nothing is happening people send you messages through the computer telling you to trust no one as they all have ulterior motives. Very relatable.

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Programming is so funny. It says

"ERROR: int can not be converted to a string"

And you're just like "oh, okay. *adds ".ToString()" to the end*"

"Alright that's okay ^w^"

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coding got me saying shit like “target the child” “assign its class” “override its inheritance” like the third wife of a dying oil baron discovering his of-age son born out of wedlock

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HT @dataelixir

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Okay forget this. This game is obviously not a match with my learning style. I was presented with the next level's challenge, clicked a few items on the screen randomly to try to understand how the interface worked, and suddenly a message popped up saying "Solved! :D"

...Apparently I solved the challenge? I hadn't even started trying to solve the challenge yet. I hadn't even typed anything. Yeah nah, I quit.

Like... I'm sorry, is it just me, or is this the most ridiculously convoluted way to explain the concept of "HEAD" that has ever been seen?

(regarding this)

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Like... I'm sorry, is it just me, or is this the most ridiculously convoluted way to explain the concept of "HEAD" that has ever been seen?

(regarding this)