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Fair point. What I mean by "hacker" may well be different from what other people mean. I just mean a mindset which some people may think reckless but that other

Fair point. What I mean by "hacker" may well be different from what other people mean. I just mean a mindset which some people may think reckless but that others may find exhilarating: tinkering with something, trying to figure out empirically how it works and how you can improve on it, while ignoring learning all the theory and sensible basics until/unless you find you need to understand it to get past a particular obstacle. Probably not a good way to build a career, but great fun to a certain kind of person (like me). It's what I used to do as a kid, and I had great success with it. I'm hoping it's possible to replicate in some aspect of modern computing, but I'm put off by the layers of systems and tools and SDKs that I get the impression are involved in most programming these days. So I'm looking for a context in which this kind of "hacker" (to me) mindset might still be alive and well.

terminalcommand 11y ago
I can understand what you're saying. If you've programmed with Visual Basic and assembly you're already familiar with most of the concepts. I would suggest looking at the website learnxinyminutes.com. It will give you an overview of current languages. As you haven't been programming for along time I would suggest picking up a language that is easy to setup. I would recommend perl, after a short introduction you can download and install every module you like from cpan.org with a single command and start solving puzzles. Coming from Visual Basic and assembly I think you will struggle with object orientation and functional programming at first. My advice get a Linux machine or vm, install cpanm. Have a look at perl at learnxinyminutes and start coding. You could write a script with WWW::Mechanize that scrapes news from HN. BTW I am currently fascinated by win32 assembly programming and reverse engineering. Your old-school knowledge is still valuable. Continue reading HN and coding fun projects. You'll catch up in no time.

terminalcommand 11y ago

I can understand what you're saying. If you've programmed with Visual Basic and assembly you're already familiar with most of the concepts. I would suggest looking at the website learnxinyminutes.com. It will give you an overview of current languages. As you haven't been programming for along time I would suggest picking up a language that is easy to setup. I would recommend perl, after a short introduction you can download and install every module you like from cpan.org with a single command and start solving puzzles. Coming from Visual Basic and assembly I think you will struggle with object orientation and functional programming at first. My advice get a Linux machine or vm, install cpanm. Have a look at perl at learnxinyminutes and start coding. You could write a script with WWW::Mechanize that scrapes news from HN. BTW I am currently fascinated by win32 assembly programming and reverse engineering. Your old-school knowledge is still valuable. Continue reading HN and coding fun projects. You'll catch up in no time.