Topic: Advice for Fast-track to Crypto-Dev (Read 980 times)

dont limit yourself to crypto projects... try to gain a wide variety of programming experience.

Excellent advice. When I first started learning Ruby on Rails I quickly became curious about some of the "magic" of that framework and spent months reading every line of code in certain gems.. especially Active Record.. and working myself through some self-devised coding challenges to make sure I knew how everything worked.

Of course, I also wasn't a beginner programmer at the time, just new to that language and framework. I had been programming BASIC for as long as I can remember (my uncle taught me when I was a kid on his old Apple II+) and started learning C and a little C++ before I even started high school because I had gotten involved in the BBS modding scene almost immediately after I got my first modem.


^ this. Stack Overflow has been a life saver for me more times than I care to admit. It's an almost indispensable tool for programmers these days, whether you're the one looking for answers or the one answering people's questions. Most beginner questions have already been asked and answered there, so it's always a good place to go if you're stuck on something that you think should be simple.

Hi GeminiSimba,

judging from your statement, you're bold -- and boldness is maybe the most important character trait you need as a programmer. The second important character trait IMHO is a high frustration tolerance. As developers, most of the time we have to face an overwhelming lack of information, incomplete and even misleading information, a messy setup, half broken tools, crappy documentation and combatants, whose best skills aren't the social ones.

As a first step, I'd recommend that you try to understand why your goals (becoming a crypto programmer) are very ambitious. Unless you're an absolute genius, you'll need years of constant, actual practising to contribute to that area without doing any harm. Thus it would be a very good idea to define yourself some intermediary goals to aim at. Kind of  like stepping stones. For example, how about being able to code a web site, which might be for some crypto currency related service? A next, somewhat more ambitious goal would be the ability to contribute to a standalone client application with a nice GUI, learn GUI programming and improve the usability of such a GUI. A next, even more ambitious step would be the ability to work in backend / server processes. Like, e.g. the ability to contribute to a trading engine which matches bids and asks and executes orders. And -- while you proceed on that part, I'd highly recommend that you always try to read and understand other people's code. So that you get a feeling of the actual problems contemporary coding has to deal with. Thus, instead of just using frameworks and libraries (as most programmers do), you could add the additional challenge for yourself to look into the source code of such frameworks and libraries and try to understand why they are the way they are.

The good news is that with today’s vibrant open source world, it is very much possible to get your hands on "real stuff", without the need to be part of an university or industrial organisation. I'd wish way more people would build on that unique opportunity and engage into OpenSource development, instead of wasting their time and mental capacity with gaming and social networks. Because it is very much possible that we're headed towards a world again, where computers are completely dongled and -- unless you sign a non disclosure agreement -- all you get your hands on will be toy stuff, not real stuff.

Regarding a starting point for help: have a look into stackoverflow.com ! There is a huge number of beginner questions for each and every language there (including C). This might give you a feeling about the problems other people have to deal with. Plus, especially from the answers to beginner questions, you often get links to interesting blogs.

Beyond that, the definitive, hard-core forums for any widely used programming language are still in the "usenet" (the "news" protocol, which is a very ancient, text based message protocol from the old days of the internet). This is still the place where you find the old farts with years of experience and lots of battle stories, the people who create programming languages and build compilers. There are some sites which bridge the news groups into the Web, so you can read them like a web forum. My recommendation is to look at gmane.org. From there, look into the news groups in the "comp.lang.*" hierarchy.

hope that helps
and: welcome in the community of people actually programming computers!

-- Ichthyo

Maybe in here:
http://forums.oreilly.com

or

http://forums.devshed.com/beginner-programming-16/

O'Reilly's books can be quite useful (well, they were, haven't gotten a new one in 10-15 years) so I'd think their forums could be.

If not what you are looking for, maybe Google it.

Maybe create an off-topic coding area here.

Do you guys know if there are any forums or networking sites for people who program in C so i can chat with people who are into it? Reason I ask is I was at work earlier (not paying attention to my actual job of customer service) and spent over an hour frustrated with my own code wondering why it wasn't working when all syntax seemed correct. I was not willing to go to the next section of the course until I could prove I understood the rule by writing a program with it. Came home and realized that the online website (codepad.org) does not understand 0b which I am taught is the prefix to use before giving a binary sequence.

I kept getting errors on the website and so I copied the code and emailed it to myself so I could paste it in my compiler when I got home and figure out wtf is wrong.
Got home just now and ran the code on the compiler and it worked on the first try...

Basically by learning alone and not knowing any programmers in my life to chat with i wasted an hour staring at perfect code with no issues >_>

Don't be fooled by C++, it's an entirely different beast. C syntax is valid in C++, but C++ itself is a different language with different syntax once you start using it's features.

Thank you, I will spend this year simply mastering C completely then.

Once you finished your C course you should stick with C until you have grasped the language and have some good experience. There is a difference between learning the basics and being experienced. I wouldnt suggest jumping languages either. C is a great language and is the fundemental to most other languages/scripting languages.

Have a look at some code, especially bitcoin/altcoin code, Its C++ but you will recognise alot of statments, conditionals and loops from C.

Look at the cbitcoin library that was recently released.

Experience is the key.

Good afternoon everyone,

A quick introduction, I currently do help-desk support for a graphics card manufacturer named XFX. Been doing it for a few years and dealing with graphics cards is how I came to know about bitcoin technology in the first place (customers calling about frying their cards mining). Anyways, I've been in the crypto space for over a year now and I realized that most of my time is spent on the sidelines, listening to Letstalkbitcoin and really only grasping the economic and social impact digital currency brings to the table...

Until now that is. My resolution for this year has been to learn to become a programmer, I want to really get involved in this world from a developers standpoint. Technically I have a degree in networking (even though I never use what i learned doing helpdesk) and I did take a semester years ago on python but to be frank up until now if I saw any sort of code it was jibberish.

So I finally made the choice to jump in seriously and I'm just about done with a really great course that has taught me the basics of "C", I learned arrays, pointers and most recently loops. In fact this entire experience makes me feel young again all giddy with excitement because the first program I created after learning how loops work was a program which prints "Your Mom" over and over and over until it runs out your memory and crashes your computer (because I purposely turned it into an infinite loop) and I realized omg i can really mess with someone if I sent them this program lol.

Ok finally to the point of this message. I was thinking the quickest path to becoming a dev worth hiring or joining a startup in the crypto world was that after I finish learning C I should go to C++ and python? I'm not sure...I guess what I'm saying is, is there any experienced programmers who can give me tips or advice on how I should proceed once i've finished my C course in such a way that I can really get on the fast track to crypto related coding?

Please don't hesitate to respond here or pm me. Thank you.