As someone who has a large interest in programming, coding and computer science, software and hardware, but has been largely self-taught I know how difficult it can be knowing how to get started in “hacking”.
There are loads of resources out there for those who kow what they are looking for but for a complete beginner I found there was no resource to tell you where and how to get started with it all, so here it is!
WARNING:
The most overhwhelming thing to begin with is the incredible amount of jargon involved in programming and it is easy to feel completely useless when people are using loads of words that you have no clue about BUT persist and definitely ask them.
Not a single person you meet will know and understand it all because it is such a vast and varied subject, lots of intelligent people can be in conversation about tech subject from different backgrounds and they will all be using terms that half of them don’t know themselves – the most intelligent will confess ignorance and learn.
This guide isn’t designed to teach you one particular language, there are already hundreds of other ways of doing this. This is there because when I got started I felt incredibly lost as to where I was supposed to begin – what language should I learn? How do I actually use it? What’s the differences between all these things? What is it that I actually need to know?
So I have made this for someone who has never done anything like this before and is looking for help navigating the crazy world of coding and hacking and wants a starting point and to act as a reference for whoever needs it to identify which knowledge it is they are missing and how and where to get it.
[ ADDING UPDATES 21/08/16 SO PLEASE BE PATIENT WITH CHANGES!!]
- Programming Languages
- Operating systems
- Writing code
- Running code
- APIs
- Website Design
- Data Design
- Machine Learning
- Hardware & Embedded Processing
Incredible thanks to the ever wonderful Angus Pearson for helping me and inspiring me to do this. He has so much enthusiasm for hacking but also uses so much jargon – parts of this guide are just my simplification and supporting resources of his teachings to me! … Well, except the hardware stuff – that is my attempt at giving back to you Angus (although so many apologies for me being too late to help you on your summer placement, I hope you still find it useful)…
Blue Pigeons 