Wow Mr. Avan, I really don't even have the words. That is a very kind offer you have just made me, and I am glad to take you up on it! I have been poking around on forums in hopes to find a place like this for quite sometime and have been empty handed for every try spent until now. Please know that I do understand that your time is valuable not only to you, but to your other students also and I will try my very hardest to make sure . And I assure you the time won't be wasted on either you nor myself. I will do my very best to learn things at a rate that will be both efficient and swift. Again, thank you so much for helping me along the way on this journey.
So, you hinted towards needing me to explain to you a little bit more in terms of my interests and what it is exactly I am trying to build a skill set for. I am going to try my best to clarify that for you.
As I am preparing to start school sometime in the 3rd quarter of this year, I think I am set on a career in cybersecurity. Specifically, I am immensely intrigued with the idea of ethical hacking and penetration testing. As a side note however, I am saying that based on the image of that position in my mind, since I have no experience with it therefore I have zero knowledge of the actual task list that one performs while doing those things on a daily basis.
But, aside from the cybersecurity field - I have thought long and hard about this answer and still have such a hard time choosing a single his - I suppose building apps for either desktop or cross-platform usage would be my interest (I’m sure that really narrowed it down for you… lol.)
But to go more in depth, honestly Mr. Avan I couldn’t say whether I want to eventually be assembling big data collection tools for AI, or designing UI tools for OSes such as Ubuntu or even a cool utility to customize a Windows desktop view. Truthfully I don’t think I will be able to make those decisions until I get my hands dirty and get to experience which of the thousands of different fields makes me the happiest, which feels the most satisfying, and which one I am most capable and adept at.
I am the type of person who learns best by doing. Trial and error. It works okay but the only problem with it is that it requires either an assigned project or one that I can ideate, visualize and find interest in myself in order to actually start plugging away at building a functioning program. And while I do have ideas for cool utilities and the like I am uncertain on how to move pass the ideation phase.
I know this is getting long but one example: I am using an old Nexus phone with an outdated Android OS (I got it to put UbuntuTouch on it) and I thought the other day “Man, wouldn’t it be cool if I created a program that worked as a task killer and, instead of being called, it simple took immediate priority in the interrupt line to kill tasks based on a condition.”
That was my ideation phase. That was the end of it. I don’t know how to map a plan, what tools it would require, what to study, how to beta test it… none of it. So I suppose what I am saying is I really don’t mind where I start, and other than building tools for ethical hacking which will be career focused, any and everything I learn now will just be a tool in the toolbelt for tackling life’s everyday problems and having a great time doing it. Anywhere you decide to steer the learning I will follow, and all I ask is that it is an area of coding that I can quickly immerse myself in the the actual “doing” phase as we learn because until I get to a point where I can practice rather than conceptualize, my mind doesn’t fully absorb the material.
So sorry I wrote another book! I was gonna PM this but wanted to say thank you publicly. Hope to be posting answers to questions in the next month - helping others like you are about to help me more than I can even know.
