Where does a wannabe hacker begin?

Your first challenge: take a generic PC (or a Mac, for that matter). Install Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP. Get Wordpress running and put up a simple blog. Make a post or two. Smile.<p>Bonus points for using Drupal instead of Wordpress.<p>You might prefer to do this exercise using a webhost like Slicehost. They'll hand you a VPS for $20 a month. The advantage here is that, when you're done, you'll have a public website instead of just a local PC that nobody can visit.<p>Read up on basic security and set up a firewall on your web server. Read up on DNS and get that working. Get a mail provider, like gmail, and wire up your new domain's email.<p>This exercise is actually really easy, nowadays. But it's a start. It will teach you a bunch of fundamentals, like how to use Google to solve all your problems ;). You will learn how much you enjoy tinkering with web technologies. And, for the purposes of many, many profitable online businesses, you'll be almost done. :)<p>----<p>When it comes to actually learning programming: Try Ruby or Python. Although I still never find time to use it, I will once again plug Hackety Hack at hacketyhack.net. Consider learning Rails by using Heroku: <a href="http://heroku.com/" rel="nofollow">http://heroku.com/</a> .<p>If you want to impress folks around here with your earnestness, read SICP. Just Google "SICP". You can even find free online lectures from the MIT class that SICP is for. If you read it, you'll know Lisp, and you'll be well launched on your career of bluffing your way through computer science. As an economist, you might be enough of a math guy that you'll fall in love with Lisp. It does happen.<p>Oh, and two key words: emacs. git. Buy and read <i>Learning emacs</i>; it's worth it. And learn about version control -- I do recommend git, but it's still kind of confusing to learn, despite the best efforts of the Peepcode screencast guy and Randal Schwartz. You may find better intro material for Subversion: google for "svn book".

I'm self-taught. My recipe:<p>1 - Find something you <i>want</i> to build<p>2 - Learn everything you need along the way<p>3 - ???? &#60;!-- Lots of hard work --&#62;<p>4 - Profit<p>I built a pop-up blocker and privacy suite this way (as a single founder) and earned more than I was making at my day job, so I eventually quit.<p>I see a lot of "things you should know" in other posts, but in my experience, they won't be interesting until you need them. You'll have to go step-by-step, though. I'd probably start with HTML and work my way out if you're interested in web apps.

I think putting together a startup and becoming a hacker are completely different things.<p>A hacker is someone who likes to play with the world around them. I don't even know if it's possible to become a hacker. If you've never been inclined to take apart your VCR or walkman then I'm not sure if hacking is for you.<p>If you just want to start something up, learn PHP and MySQL. It's easy and can run on just about any hosting account. Actually depending on what you're looking to do, a CMS like Drupal could work if your startup was just a news and review site or something.

If I were to lose all programming knowledge tomorrow, I'd send the following to my future self:<p>0) If you feel confused at any step, use Google.<p>1) Make an HTML page with Hello World.<p>2) Add an image to the page.<p>3) Position the image on the page by adding a CSS style to it.<p>4) Add a JavaScript script to the page that creates another image element, with another src URL, adds it to the page, and positions it.<p>5) Learn the principle behind the URLs of tiles at OpenStreetMap (<a href="http://openstreetmap.org" rel="nofollow">http://openstreetmap.org</a>) by using "View Image Source" in the browser. Hint: the numbers are zoomlevel/x/y.<p>6) Add a script in your page that creates some new image elements with OSM tiles, sitting seamlessly next to each other.<p>7) Learn about event handlers in JavaScript (onmousedown/onmousemove/onmouseup), and try to make the resulting map draggable. In Firefox first, then IE.<p>Congratulations, you're now a passably good client-side webdev.

Perry, how do you know that the two of the founders actually do lots of programming in Auctomatic?<p>They could've helped the team in other areas such as:<p>1) Strategy<p>2) Marketing (newsletter, beta invitation, etc)<p>3) UI design (but not UI coding)<p>4) Sys/Net/DB-admin<p>5) Legal issue<p>and let the Collison brothers do the actual programming without having to worry of these stuffs. The Collisons are one of the kind. Prodigy is the right word to describe them both.<p>If you look at their About page: <a href="http://auctomatic.com/about" rel="nofollow">http://auctomatic.com/about</a> , there are 2 more people beside the 4. At least one of the two is of technical type.<p>Summer is 4 months long, I'm sure you can learn something. But I don't think you'll be anywhere near the people in this website in terms of technical ability.<p>The more you ask technical questions from News YC, the more you "dig" yourself deeper in the technical side of the world and the less time you will focus on your startup.<p>But don't be discourage, anyone can start anything at this day and age.<p>You can:<p>1) Learn PHP/MySQL/JavaScript/HTML/CSS and ignore advices<p>2) Learn Back-end (PHP/MySQL/AJAX) and outsource front-end<p>3) Outsource everything to India/China/Russia/East Europe<p>There are the News YCombinator kind of startups.<p>There are the Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yahoo! kind of startups.<p>There are also the kind of iContact, "Ben Casanova", PlentyOfFish kind of startups.<p>I wish you the best on whatever the path you chose.

I am usually a Java developer, with years of experience, so my outlook might be different. But I just started a Ruby On Rails project, and my impression is that "Programming Ruby" and "Agile Web Development With Rails" should be sufficient to get you going (OK, and maybe some HTML tutorial somewhere, don't know which ones are good in english).<p>I think "Agile Web Development With Rails" has been dissed by the "rails community", but my impression is good. It shows exactly the examples you'll need (like how to create a login form).

Good read would be "How to become a Hacker" - <a href="http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a><p>Anyway since most of the startups are built using Open Source software, beginning to hacking with them would take you to the edge.

A fellow econ major?<p>I'll echo most of the advice already given here, but because your an econ major, I'll add something else just for fun: Try to do a research project or paper or whatever on some trend in the IT industry, like the history of the OS market or even the respective market territories of different programming languages. This won't teach you to hack, but it may help you set priorities as you learn, and it will help you if you attempt a startup.

If you want to get a taste of the whole thing:<p>1. Install Ubuntu.<p>2. Start using emacs (maybe with "Learning Emacs", O'Reilly, as mechanical_fish suggests).<p>3. Learn some Python (maybe with "Learning Python", O'Reilly too).<p>4. Use webpy (<a href="http://webpy.org" rel="nofollow">http://webpy.org</a>) to develop a simple web application.<p>5. Learn how to program SQLite (and thus basic SQL) using Python and make your web application use a database.<p>6. Make your application public (<a href="http://vpslink.com" rel="nofollow">http://vpslink.com</a> might be enough, $7.95/month).<p>The 4th and 5th are "minimalistic" (for a web framework and a DB engine), least "complication", because the goal should be (I think) completing a simple project in a few months. From this you might get a glimpse of "the forest", or "connect the dots" (of web programming).<p>After that, if you want more, you can now go learn all of what others have very appropriately suggested: SICP, some system administration, PostgreSQL, Ruby (+ on Rails), git (or Bazaar), Data Structures, Algorithms, Test Driven Development, PHP, etc.

The best way to do this, is whatever idea you have, try and build it using Ruby on Rails. You may make some mistakes, but the best thing about Rails is that many of the architectural decisions are made for you. You only really need to worry about the syntax once you get the hang of it.<p>Lots of the other advice on here, about learning C, and SICP, and emacs and CS fundamentals is nice but not necessary. Learning it will be very hard for an absolute newbie to get anything out of. It could demoralize you.<p>Thats why I'd advise to actually start building whatever it is you have a startup idea for. It will give you traction. You will definately struggle, but at least you'll have something concrete to show for your efforts. And I'd use Rails. If you run into problems you can always go the rubyonrails IRC channel or even ruby-lang. You'll get the hang of it. If you are going to take this route I'd recommend the Rails book by DHH.

Perry, i decided to learn how to program about a week ago. tuesday night i started with HTML (dont laugh). i think it is important to know those basics before you go on and learn server side scripting. i tried hackety hack before and php, but the problem is you want instant gratification so you wont stop. thursday night i stayed up an extra 3 hours past my normal time and created a nice html document with my pictures linked from tumblr, added an email form, comment form and submit buttons. off course the form did not submit anything to the server, but now i am hoocked, and instead of pinging developers and killing them with "what's the status" now i know within a few months i will be able to start creating simple web apps. so start small, then once you got html, xhtml and css locked, move to server side scripting.

Once you start coding, start sitting in on some CS classes at your college to get some fundamentals down.<p>Data Structures (bonus points if it's in a functional language), Algorithms, Systems, and Architecture are all a must.

Learn a free Unix - like Linux or BSD. Really. A huge part of hacking IMHO is taking an open system that is sometimes quite complex (like an OS), shedding your fear of breaking things, and tinkering. When things do break, you will learn so much from fixing them. =) It is a lot of fun, free, and will get your feet wet with some of the other stuff that mechanical_fish mentioned.<p>I also recommend Emacs. I haven't worked with git just yet, but I use Mercurial all the time (and I will eventually get around to using git). Avoid CVS like the plague.

At the same time you pick up a C++ book, go to <a href="http://www.topcoder.com/tc" rel="nofollow">http://www.topcoder.com/tc</a> and start up the arena (after reading the instructions, of course). Then practice, both the language and some problems, for about 2-3 weeks. Once you are able to solve the easiest (but not always trivial) problems regularly, you will be more than ready to easily pick up a markup language like HTML or a scripting language like Python. This will help you to be more comfortable with programming in general and to get some problem solving skills. These skills are useful when you develop software because it increases your productivity and helps you to write better code. This is not the only place you can get this kind of practice from, but everything is already set up so that you can go ahead and get started. I believe things will be easier afterwards if you get these skills first. It’s also a good idea to be able to think recursively, but you can work on this later on, and when you do you can try SICP, which is a very good resource. I hope this helps.

Start here:<p><a href="http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/" rel="nofollow">http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/</a><p>No, seriously. If you've never programmed before, this will teach you far more than you'll need, initially, but later on you'll realize that you picked up a lot of really good habits and never needed to unlearn the bad ones.<p>Try it. If you like it, you won't look back. If not, perhaps a career in finance isn't such a bad idea anyways.

<a href="http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html" rel="nofollow">http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html</a><p>If you want to be more of an Admin I recently wrote this:<p>to start do 4 os installs, centos, debian, gentoo, and freebsd in that order. install apache, mysql, bind and postfix on each. set up joomla, drupal, and word press on each. make sure all 4 systems will come up with all services working on reboot. get a free subdomain from someone like dtdns.com. set bind up to use it. make sure that you can view the web pages and send emails to the machine from an external machine, doesn't have to be at a remote location, and that it continues to work on reboot (without your intervention). drupal, word press, and joomla must be working at the same time. by the time you are done you will have an ok understanding of the the various <i>nix's and </i>nix itself, and the tasks common for a sys admin. if you need help you can probably ask for it on the distributions forum/mailing list or the softwares forum/mailing list.<p>it's a good start even if you want to be a programmer.

If you're hoping to get into web development, then you'll need to learn quite a lot of pieces of technology. For a professional, the minimum knowledge base is TCP/IP networking, HTTP, HTML, Javascript, the DOM, SQL, a bit of UNIX shell, and at least one general-purpose programming language like Python, Ruby, or PHP.<p>As a hobbyist, you can start smaller than that, of course. Learning HTML and a bit of Javascript is a great start -- if you can build simple client-side dynamic apps, moving into server-side scripting is a lot easier. Configuring a basic Linux server to host web applications (even if it's just a virtual machine, or a spare PC under your desk) is a big step forward, too.<p>As an economist who <i>may</i> want to do some web development, though, you might gain as much from learning a general-purpose language like Python as you will from web development. Being able to toss out a quick script to do your simulations or mine an existing data set may prove substantially more valuable to you than an in-depth understanding of PHP and Apache configuration.

Regularly read Wikipedia articles on computer science, programming, logic, and perhaps mathematics and/or linguistics topics. Get Firebug and inspect the code of sites you like. Start building something with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. Constantly improve what you're working on, and don't be afraid to ditch what you've got and start something new.<p>Focus on JavaScript. Watch the SICP lectures, read Doug Crockford, Raganwald, John Resig, and pg's Arc source. Learn the ins and outs of emacs, vim, TextMate, or Eclipse. Play with Lisp, Python, Ruby, and Io and read others' code in those languages, then apply what you like to your style of writing JavaScript. Try out the major JS frameworks (jQuery, Prototype, MochiKit) and settle on one of them. Then rig up a server-side JavaScript solution (Jaxer, Helma). Pick an interesting domain and learn about it until you find an overlooked problem you can solve, then capitalize on it.

The 'C' Programming Language.<p>if you do not like C programming,<p>"How to Think Like a Computer Scientist: Learning with Python" to learn python.<p>available for free on the net

Choose something that you want to make, even if it's just a clone of an existing site or service. Then figure out what database, language, CMS etc you need and start hacking it together. You'll be much more motivated with a goal in mind than just trying to learn a language from a book.

You can do it if you work hard. I did econ / accounting @ UCLA and took a couple of C++ courses that was enough to get me hungry for building a web app rather than a desktop app.<p>I am self taught and was stubborn enough to learn to setup a load balanced web cluster in linux, a postfix mail server, and write the code for my web app.<p>The secret, like others have said, is to build out an idea you have. Once you finished that project you will most likely have dozens of ideas you want to work on. Right around that time read The Dip by Seth Godin so you learn to know when to hold em and when to fold em.

Given your econ major, surely there must be some interesting problems you have come across that you would like to attack by writing some programs?<p>Python is a great language to dive into. Easy to learn because it intentionally left out most of the boiler-plate fluff from other languages and lets you just express your solution in a direct, concise fashion.<p>If you get to the point where you need to crunch large number sets, check out scipy and numpy (just google). Takes a slight effort to set up initially, but then allows you to quickly process lots of numbers. Linear algebra, optimization, etc.

A lot of these descriptions are very specific. It doesn't matter what kind of computer you have or what tools you use. You just need a computer, a text editor, and to choose a language to start in. I highly recommend Python. Its a really simple one to learn and is great for web dev.<p>Download it here: <a href="http://code.enthought.com/download.shtml" rel="nofollow">http://code.enthought.com/download.shtml</a><p>And here's a nice beginner's guide: <a href="http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide" rel="nofollow">http://wiki.python.org/moin/BeginnersGuide</a>

Assuming knowledge of basic computing, I would say the progression for a beginner is as follows: html, css, javascript, backend language of your choice (php,asp,etc.), databases/SQL. You can stop here if all you want to do is build a website, just keep in mind that web programming is only one branch on the massive tree of computer programming.<p>It should also be noted that building a website is also an exercise in graphic design, writing, and user interaction design. Anyone of those other facets can be equally difficult to learn and master.

Not everyone needs to code in a startup. It's good to have someone that is more inclined to bizdev than hacking.<p>You should however be familiar with the hacker's arsenal of tools like Trac, Subversion, Eclipse, etc.<p>The first order of business in a startup is to build something that people want (after PG). More and more that something should solve some real business problem - not just another me-too social network .<p>I'd think your economics background could be put to good use in today's climate. Do feel that you have to be a coder - but find someone that can. You'll have a good team.<p>Cheers

If I had a fledgling hacker under my wing I would show him how I develop, which, for me, is the laziest and most productive way I have yet found.<p>gentoo, sbcl, emacs, slime, weblocks, ec2, git.<p>YMMV.

I would suggest you to start at the client side. this is where all server technologies are willing to end up at. Therefore start in this order: 1) (X)Html. 2) CSS. 3) JavaScript + toolkit library such as jQuery or Prototype. 4) Python. 5)SQL (and SQLite).<p>In between read about theories and patterns in software design (Wikipedia is a great resource).<p>And do not ever be shy to ask whatever you do not understand.<p>good luck.

I'm in the same boat. I'm a communication major, but I discovered Unix via Mac OS X, and I was hooked. Like a lot of geeks, however, I programmed in BASIC as a kid.<p>First, I'd start off with an open source Unix, probably Ubuntu if you don't have one installed already. Just learning to work the shell will give you some useful programming experience. Then I would start learning Python.

<a href="http://www.textfiles.com/hacking/statemind.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www.textfiles.com/hacking/statemind.txt</a> I feel this hits the definition. There are differences at levels between 'hacker' and 'programmer' and 'open source developer', but the universe is visible in a grain of sand. Forget not to read dabblers and blowhards at www. idlewords.com

From your passions, try to do what you like at your best. The rest will follow automagically :)

If your goal is to become a surgeon, don't start by learning to cast your own surgical instruments. Same principle applies here - hang with the econ, then hire a guy with stains all over his shirt when you're ready.

I recommend folks jump in with PHP. Rename a webpage .php and you are rocking-and-rolling. Start with a project idea, buy a few books and start hacking!

why lose time? you are not going to learn programming in 1 day anyways, neither in 1 month...except if thats the only thing you are doing...<p>it's better that you find an idea in your knowledge domain (economics that is), find someone to do the hacking for you, (learn a few programming stuff while starting up) and contribute to the company your knowledge...

<a href="http://norvig.com/21-days.html" rel="nofollow">http://norvig.com/21-days.html</a>

Perl.

Hello.<p>A lot of people here recommended emacs, but it might not be the most suitable tool for you personally, or not the most suitable tool for a given task.<p>For example, if you want to code in Java, the best tool for that job is IntelliJ IDEA.<p>If you want to code in Common Lisp, the best tool for that job is emacs - mostly because it offers the best integration with Lisp (with an add-on).<p>Emacs and Vim both have their followers, and they have fought many religious wars over their editors' merits.<p>The point is that your choice of an editor need not be between emacs and vim. They just happen to be the preferred tools for most of "the big boys" around these circles.<p>Since you're aiming for web-development in a business environment, in your situation, you're probably more interested in making code appear on your screen than hard-core editor wizardry.<p>Don't spend too much time worrying about emacs or vim.<p>If you do want to settle in one of those camps, choose after you've tried or investigated both, and have a good idea of why you would prefer one of them over the other.<p>As for a programming language, I'd say that Python should be a safe bet.<p>It's a relatively elegant, mature language, which should be useful for all kinds of development.<p>One of the most popular web-frameworks, Django, also happens to be written in (and for) Python. It looks like a sensible and practical tool, and I suggest you check it out.<p>As a sidenote, PHP is not very highly regarded as a language by serious programmers. Its merit is getting stuff happening quickly.<p>Just like others have said, you need to learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and SQL too.<p>Using something like Slicehost would probably be a good idea too, so you'd get accustomed to the maintenance side of things.<p>I wish you good luck! :)

i don't want to discourage you because any technical learning will help you in the future - but just in case if you find this things very technical or boring or not interested then don't get disappointed (and dont give-up either) because u can still become a webpreneur - a startup is about many things and not only hacking, its about building a business from scratch it requires skills, knowledge, experience of sales, marketing, finance, HR, market research, project management etc.<p>Also if you have terrific idea then u dont have to wait to learn those technical skills rather you start looking for hacker co-founder or hire a hacker or outsource it to a freelancer - this is because there might be someone who has the same idea and is planning a startup, so u better keep balance between speed, gaining knowledge and time spent on learning hacking ONLY.