This is not a joke!I have been trying to become a software developer for roughly the last 10 years. I tried to teach myself, but I wasn't successful. C, C++, C#, Python, and even x86 Assembly; I spent time with each of these languages. I also spent time with x64dbg and Ghidra, and built practice projects. Yet, I could never reach my goal.What was my goal? (Please don't laugh. I basically just wanted to be cool.)I wanted to be someone who could defeat anti-cheat software like Vanguard, EAC, and BattlEye. I wanted to crack DRM protections like Denuvo. At one point, I remember wanting to become an RPCS3 developer; I wanted to learn how to build a console emulator. Another time, I became fascinated by hypervisor development and I wanted to build an undetectable hypervisor.In my opinion, one of my biggest mistakes was getting tangled up in Linux and Neovim. Linux in particular is a complete black hole; it completely drains a person's time and energy. On top of that, being completely alone, with no peers and no mentor, terribly hurt my progress.Do I still have a chance? How can I turn things around?Along the way, I also developed a bad habit: hoarding notes. I kept "preparing" myself for some future day. Instead of actually making real progress, I was trying to create the "perfect" study notes. I kept trying to come up with a new learning model or a new approach, at least, that’s the illusion I fed myself. Fortunately, I have destroyed most of those notes now.
>>109879206My guy, do you know how much money do companies pay on drm? Some of the most talented autistic people struggle with it or cannot come through. Emulators and hypervisors are also hard to get into but you likely will in time, but even then, calm your tits man, fork some popular hypervisor and get a grasp of its work and then contribute some feature or create a really small version, and then move on to the harder stuff
>>109879258Thanks. I know it's hellishly difficult, but also that's why it's cool; and like I said "I wanted to be cool." I'm thinking about changing my approach fundamentally. On the other hand AI is here. Idk if it's still worth it.
Aren't hypervisors just assembly instructions about changing the priority level in a register, I forget whether its the eeflags register or something else where changing this changes how and where the cpu allocates memory.
Here is the simple solution:Stop trying to Learn.Start trying to Build.
You can easily become a software developer. You just won't get paid.
10 years ago, sure. I can see it.But now?Software Engineering is a solved problem, and not just that, it has also become fully democratized.
>>109879206>In my opinion, one of my biggest mistakes was getting tangled up in Linux and Neovim. Linux in particular is a complete black hole; it completely drains a person's time and energy. On top of that, being completely alone, with no peers and no mentor, terribly hurt my progress.Yeah. Your biggest mistake. Linux is a complete time waste and literally no cheat dev or reverse engineer uses neovim. Those are useless nonsense that wastes time.You need places where you can connect and ask questions about this stuff (not UC though), you need to learn about how things go in the scene. I started just like you.>Do I still have a chance? How can I turn things around?Yeah. Network with people. Get into 'cord servers or places like that about game hacking.
>>109881559do both.
>>109879206>Do I still have a chance? How can I turn things around?you need to understand that programming is a tool youre supposed to use to solve problemsyou want to hakc drms and shiet?learn what you need to do thatthen do itnone of the linux ricing/neovim retardationare you dumb?>i want to do xyz>i know, lets do abc instead!>oh noes, why did i fail?
>>109881559this *clap*so *clap*much *clap*this *clap*
>>109881716he's right, fag
>>109881727i literally agreed with him?
>>109879206Contrary to what the doomers here say, if you are motivated and passionate there are still programming jobs out there. You don't even strictly need a degree to get a job (although getting a programming job without a degree is going to be very hard).First, do you have a 4 year degree? Second, have you been employed anywhere and consistently? Third how are you advertising your experience in your resume? Finally, have you practiced your soft skills/interviewing?
>>109881707I know it sounds dumb when you summarize it like this.But we're talking about a whole decade here. I was just hopping around out of frustration. I fell for the Linux and ricing meme.
>>1098818511. No2. No3. I don't have a resume4. I've been talking with AI this whole past year. I mean lots of talking.
>>109881688>You need places where you can connect and ask questions about this stuff (not UC though)UC is the only place I know. There are some Discord servers as well but they are mostly dead.
>>109881927Google "secret club windows internals", start from here.
>>109881882its ok anonnow you know betterfocus on your objectivesbuild a roadmap, and follow itit wont be perfect (the roadmap) but at least you wont disperse your efforts into pursuits that dont advance your goalsalsthough a solid understanding of linux is a good skill to have, so it wasnt entirely wasted timesame with neovim if you can actually leverage the extensibility of cli toolsbut these pursuits didnt move you closer to achieve your goalsand thats my point. do stuff that moves you towards your goal, and everything will sort itself out.except your rent. you have to figure that part out separately
>>109881908Anon, it sounds like you actually know quiet a bit of technical content. I actually which we could hire a linux ricer here over some of the jeets that cheated through grad school, never touched a bash terminal, and now are going to do Linux development.You need to start turning as many of those no's into yes. Other than getting a degree, those are all points you could work on right now. All those points are going to cause a HR department to filter your resume (which you need to make), before it ever gets in front of any technical person.To start, make a resume. Then just get a job, literally any job and staying at it for a while to show you can work with people. Ideally get some 4 year degree, no idea how to fund that though.
>>109879206I have the exact same problem except I'm starting to make progress slowlyThis is how I do it:1. Pick C and stick with it no matter what. C will teach you more about computers than any other high level language can whilst allowing you to periodically drop in to inlined assembly when needed. Try to implement vtables, hash maps etc over and over again until writing them feels like second nature. Take all the time you need; look up concepts you don't understand yet. One thing will lead to another until eventually you'll be building an interpreter without even realizing it.2. C's syntax - especially pointer syntax - is disgusting and genuinely extremely hard to remember after a certain point. Don't worry; unless you're a savant everyone feels the same way. Just wrap C syntax in macros where you find the syntax uncomfortable (yes, you can actually do that - people don't credit the preprocessor enough). Tweak your macros as much as you want. Eventually you'll end up writing code that genuinely feels like C++ syntactically despite not being C++ (assuming you pursue an OOP pattern as I did).3. Don't use high level tools like Ghidra until you could recreate the basic principles of Ghidra in your head with command line tools. Start off with low level tools like objdump and awk and how they work together to reconstruct high-level logic from raw assembly. Again feel free to look up literally anything that is unfamiliar until talking about it feels like talking about the weather. This also applies to other tools; for example, instead of using an IDE (which feels like magic), use an extremely lightweight text editor that comes preinstalled with your OS. On Linux, most text editors - even the really simple ones - come preinstalled with C syntax highlighting. Windows has Notepad, which works, but it's extremely bare bones (no syntax highlighting, dark mode wasn't supported until recently - you can probably see why Linux is more popular amongst software devs).
>>109883388Like you I am obsessed with being entirely self-sufficient, like from those 80's Hollywood hacker movies. My ultimate goal was essentially being able to open any Linux machine and do anything with only default, preinstalled tools.If parts of this reply didn't make sense, don't worry. It didn't make sense for me either not that long ago. Look up anything that doesn't make sense or seems unfamiliar. You've got this anon.
>>109879206First when you say 10 years, is that like when lucky indie devs claim they were hacking at 12 ?Or are you actually over 30 years old?If you aren't then just go to a cheap college. There's still time.If you are then you should know that you just posted like 3 pretty unrelated domains drm, os dev and hacking (hiding the hypervisor).For comparison, as someone with a degree and over 5 years of experience, before AI, I can't do any of those either. Sure I know the principles but there's hundreds if not thousands of words of jargon to even begin working with it.Do you still have a chance? Sure, but you'd have to be rich enough to afford spending the time required to take things from the ground up. You don't learn engineering by thinking cool thoughts.
>>109883431This is wrong, OS dev and hacking are 1000% related. The basic principles of OS will naturally lend extremely well to hacking and vice versa. For instance when studying OS development they'll tell you about when to use paging versus when not to, which is critical for extremely low level rootkits too that depend on precision. Or how strcpy is unsafe - learn that as a defender (OS Dev) and you learn how to use it as an attacker and vice versa.
>>109883467Tbf hacking is the broadest term imaginable, so you can connect it with anything computer related. But anon was talking about the supervisor which is indeed very entangled with the os
Yesterday, I started AI detox. After using AI heavily for a year, trying to learn things without asking AI is incredibly frustrating. On the other hand, I know that if I ask AI again, I won't be able to improve myself properly.
