I was told by an industry professional that I was in a good place to start with the CISSP. Fresh out of Security+ certification, I have been surprised by how much my approach has needed to change to accommodate the differences in style and material.
The exams each have stated purpose.
According to CompTIA, “Security+ focuses on practical, hands-on skills to tackle real-world challenges”. The next step for many would be CySA+, which “…validates a tech professional’s expertise in incident response and vulnerability management processes…”.
I’ve been a jack of all trades and a master of none when it comes to code.
Over the years, I have written Java and robotc, coached people in basic Python, troubleshot Javascript and all sorts of websites. Despite that, I feel that I have never dove deep enough to really establish fluency in (or perhaps what I am looking for mastery of) a language. Even using Java for ACM challenges, i never felt i sunk my teeth in enough to really grok the end to end process of Writing A Program, although many of the style conventions are stuck in my head to this day. I want to start really understanding the depth of a single language.
Exploring your current environment is a great way to learn what is possible to learn.
As I’ve worked on improving my command-line and NeoVIM skills, I had a look at awesome-cli-apps to see what was (comparatively) new and shiny and worth learning.
As a minimal entry point, I decided to try eza: a modern alternative to ls, intended to be more featureful and colorful.
It was a Dell Mini 9 running Ubuntu (8? Maybe 10?). It was an excellent start, and to this day, I stand by Ubuntu’s utility as a gentle introduction for people already used to navigating desktop environments. The next few years were uneventful explorations of Puppy Linux, #!, Kali, and Linux on chromebooks. As time went on, work admin, gaming and the nearby temptation of WSL turned me into an almost exclusive Windows 10 user.
More than a decade after my last high school teacher gave up on me, I am finally learning to show my work.
The problem is that in doing so, I am grappling with providing a friendly user experience - learning when not to show your work.
The Background
One of my pet projects right now is a site which includes a number of calculators for knitters.
Knitting is math, and that’s part of the fun, but sometimes you just want to move your hands.
At the request of a friend, I volunteered to add a buttonhole calculator on a site I am building (in part because it was less complex than the other I had planned.)