Okay. A lot to go over here. I work with both linux/windows to various degress, so Im glad to address it:

>My issue is if you're doing any sort of system administration work, typing out PowerShell's commands is going to get hella annoying. Would you rather type two characters, or thirteen every time you wanted to use a command?

Tab complete is a thing for powershell. Just typing "ge" and hitting tab will cycle through all of the "get-xxxx" commands in alphabetical order. If you can get to "get-h," its much faster to hit the command you want. Powershell gives up a few more keystrokes for much, much more accessibility. It also has heaps of default alias's and the ability to set new ones like bash, so its really just a matter of learning them or setting them to speed this up for experienced users.

>I am not entirely sure what you mean by this. Firstly, as far as I can tell the built-in help to each cmdlet is lackluster. ("get-childitem -?" for instance, compared to "ls --help") On Windows with -? it lists only the syntax and aliases, with no further explanation of what each parameter is

I see where this is confusing form a unix perspective, but you've barely scratched the surface of the powershell help syntax. Thats okay, it generally something people learn about only during dedicated study. "help command" is the correct syntax for the help files in powershell, but the help command itself has modifiers. Try -examples for a long list of the command used in context, or --full for every detail about the commands use. You can also use --showwindow to pop out the -full in a different and easier to search window.

Not only that, but each help command shows you a couple of contexts about what parameters the command can take, and in what contexts. For example, here is the syntax of get-childitem:


Get-ChildItem [[-Filter] <String>] [-Attributes <System.Management.Automation.FlagsExpression1[System.IO.FileAttributes]&amp;gt;] [-Depth &amp;lt;UInt32&amp;gt;] [-Directory ] [-Exclude &amp;lt;String[]&amp;gt;] [-File ] [-Force ] [-Hidden ] [-Include &amp;lt;String[]&amp;gt;] -LiteralPath &amp;lt;String[]&amp;gt; [-Name ] [-ReadOnly ] [-Recurse ] [-System ] [-UseTransaction ] [&amp;lt;CommonParameters&amp;gt;]<br /> <br /> Get-ChildItem [[-Path] &amp;lt;String[]&amp;gt;] [[-Filter] &amp;lt;String&amp;gt;] [-Attributes &amp;lt;System.Management.Automation.FlagsExpression1[System.IO.FileAttributes]>] [-Depth <UInt32>] [-Directory ] [-Exclude <String[]>] [-File ] [-Force ] [-Hidden ] [-Include <String[]>] [-Name ] [-ReadOnly ] [-Recurse ] [-System ] [-UseTransaction ] [<CommonParameters>]


I realize the above doesn't mean much to a layman, but the format is consistent in each powershell command, which count into 500 or so defaults, with a few thousands mixed in with the more specialized modules for things like SQL. The above tell you required parameters, ones you can optionally add, and what kind of input each parameter needs. It shows which parameters need to be strung in a specific order, and what are okay to add anywherfe. Its full of information that you get immediately when you run "help command."

>For further explanation it looks like the proper method is to use "get-help get-childitem" in which case, the help files are not installed by default (at this point I couldn't be bothered, but I noticed there was a -online option which pops open a web browser which is convenient).

Yes, you do need to run update-help on a new install, or periodically, but thats a good thing. It means the help is actively updated, not written in 1986 and left alone as "good enough." Automate that help update and you will never have to think about it. Or, you can do what you did and immediately get the most updated help from inside the console, not googling around and hoping you run into the right info.

One other great thing about powershell help? There are accepted formatting standards in the community. When you start writing your own powershell modules (which are basically unix tools) you can add all the above syntax and expected info into the command in an easy way. This means that even third party tools have this kind of info.


>But for commands you use frequently, you will know which parameters to pass and you're done rather quickly such as "alias dir="ls"" versus "New-Alias -Name "ls" Get-ChildItem"

I see how the above would annoy you, but i bet it was easy to find out how to make a new alias in powershell. You could even just do "new-alias "alias" new-alias" and from now on you can use "alias" if you want. Its also incredibly easy to explort/import these alias's into powershell with, you guess it, "export-alias" and "import-alias". Basically, you setup alias's once in powershell, just like in linux, and its equally easy to move them around as needed.


>Unix commands e.g. "man", "vi", "less" generally share common commands. E.g. for moving between lines or pages, quitting, or searching for text.

Key word above is generally. Its completely arbitrary. Powershell? Always uses the same conventions.

>Unix tools are designed in bite-sized pieces so they can be chained together

Piping and bite- sized tools are 100% a thing in powershell as well. You can pipe sort commands from select commands, move the text around, invert it, compare it to other text files, what have you. It different philosophy than unix, as unix manipulation is text based, and powershell is object based, but the end result is the same. Still, each cmdlet does only what it does. You string them together to get results, same as bash.

Another powerful thing about powershell? Almost all of Microsoft GUI products like exchange/AD/whatever actually just run powershell commands in the background. It means that each of there products, whatever they are, can all be automated with this same syntax. Once you learn how powershell works, you gain full control of every suite in their ecosystem. There isnt a comparsion for that on the linux/bash side of the aisle.

I dont defend most of what Microsoft does, but powershell is a powerhouse. If you want to learn more, the veritable powershell bible is "Learn powershell in a month of lunches" by Don jones. If you follow along just to this book, you'll put most windows administrators to shame with what you can do.

> Could you please go more in-depth on what you mean by seeing how the components work in harmony and understanding the needs of the different ones?

The absurdly short and easy for me response is:

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-Need-Wasnt/dp/1449387861

https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165

The longer and more useful response would best be shared in a pub, assisted by frothy adult beverages of wisdom.

But, I'll give it a shot using the restrictive written word as a medium.

The CCNA certification will teach you the fundamentals of network design & configuration.
The MTA or MCSA certifications will teach you the fundamentals of Windows client and server design & configuration.

But what they don't tell you is when is a Catalyst 2960-series switch the right tool for a task, and what is something beefier like a Nexus 3K or 5K series device the more appropriate tool.

The driving factors behind appropriateness is in the details of the requirements.

Client devices (if we ignore WiFi) seldom have redundant network connections.
So laptops & desktops do not require redundant Layer-1/2 connectivity.
But all servers have, or should be equipped with redundant NICs, capable of some form of teaming configuration to form an active/active, or active/passive redundant team. The LAN solution must be compatible with this.

Then traffic volume. Client devices do not generally require frequent, sustained high volume network flows. Most client systems burst occasionally while they open a file, then settle back down to idle-chatter as they check e-mail every minute or so.

Some servers, like a DNS server receive never-ending, continuous bursts of small packet exchanges. Ass-loads of them. From thousands of source-addresses. Just a dozen packets in the conversation, which is then broken down and ended - conversation over.

Other servers, like a Hadoop cluster-member will chuck along fairly-quietly for short to medium periods of time, then engage in massive, sustained bursts of replication traffic or query exchanges.

Small, short conversations do not require extensive network buffering capability, and are not generally latency-sensitive. So general-purpose LAN hardware might be an appropriate tool for the job.

But very heavy workloads, or loads that ARE latency-sensitive (High Performance Computing, for example) might demand specialized network hardware designed for such activities.

-----

Beyond the network, one must understand the application workloads.
Some applications or systems might make ass-loads of DNS lookups.
A DNS query is not a complicated, or network-capacity intensive workload.
But if you know the application will be doing it, and will benefit from low-latency access to a DNS server, deploying an additional DNS server very close to the application might make a lot of sense.


-----

> There is one other school I have been considering. <AAS @ Green River>

I roll my eyes at the inclusion of CompTIA A+ material in a college curriculum.
That just strikes me as such a trade-school topic.
It's not bad material, but its like learning to change automotive oil as part of a mechanical engineering curriculum.

I see two Linux classes and two Network classes, so those things make me happy.
But I don't get a sense that this degree will transfer well.
I see things that should make you employable though.

The A+ cert won't get you a guaranteed job.
But the A+ and Sec+, combined with that array of associated educational topics should prepare you to hold your own in a reasonable interview.
Nothing is guaranteed, but that should be adequate.

-----

> How do you feel about a Business Degree with an (M)IS major vs a Bachelors of Science in Information Technology (maybe with a business minor)?

No objection from me on these degrees. Some of them do a better job of making sure you can see & speak-to the bigger picture, or higher altitude view of why these IT systems are important to the business.

IMO: Project Management is NOT an early-career role, but Systems Analysts, as players on a project team is certainly something early-career staff can perform.


> Do you think having a BBA would be detrimental for a career in technology?

Nope. knowledge trumps education.

> I hear some people say that MIS degrees aren't technical enough, or that they have a hard time finding a job after graduation.

Well, an MIS degree probably isn't technical enough for some job roles or position descriptions.
But an MIS degree with a CompSci minor might do the trick, for some roles.

But let's be honest, an MIS degree, all by itself is not the right degree for a position like "Lead Enterprise Architect for Mobile Application Development".

But an MIS degree, plus 9 years of experience developing software might be the right combination of education & experience for that role.

Let's also look at MIS v/s CS and IS/IT objectively, analytically.


Every single student in a college or university damned well knows that a CompSci degree is a fast-path to stable employment.
It's not quite a golden ticket for fame & fortune, but its among the most in-demand and immediately employable degrees available.

Employers & recruiters / placement agencies are actively searching for graduates that can survive a basic interview without drooling on themselves or sexually assaulting the recruiter.

There is a fixed and steady pipeline for CompSci graduates.

But CS includes a lot of big scary math, some of the biggest math requirements for any undergraduate degree track. And this scares away a lot of applicants.

A pecking order of "CompSci-light" degree options forms up, with these students all trying to get a degree that qualifies them to attend the Technology career fair, but protects them from evil math.

InfoTech, with it's focus on the nuts & bolts of operating systems, databases, networks & security proudly in a top-level tier beneath CompSci, and Computer Engineering. We rub elbows with Software Engineering grads who swear SoftEng is better, & more useful than CompSci.

InfoSystems, is watered-down InfoTech with more database and business-focus, and fewer nuts & bolts courses.

Management Info Systems is even more watered down technology material, with even more emphasis on business administration & data.


IS & MIS ARE useful degrees, and those roles ARE truly beneficial to the organization.
But the pipeline is smaller for those degrees within the Technology Career Fair.

But here is the fun fact for IS and MIS degrees:
They can attend the non-technology career fair if they want to.

IS & MIS might not have been highly in-demand at the technology career fair, but you have a whole different recruiting team with a completely different variety of slots to fill at the non-tech fair. IS & MIS starts looking much better & more attractive in this environment where they are actually hiring more project managers & analysts as opposed to developers & engineers.

-----

Some colleges, especially community colleges might only have a single career fair, but the concept still applies. MIS is valid for both technology and non-technical (less-technical) positions.

Heya! Welcome to the world of UX/UI design!

So, many years from now, I want to become a design professor because I'd get to see lots of designs like these. It's a simple idea, a simple design, but unique in a way that only somebody coming to the field with fresh eyes would make. In short, I think it's delightful.

Yes, there are some issues with the design. I won't lie, there are a lot of issues. But don't be discouraged! Start by investigating these things:

1. Visual hierarchy - Home, About, Koans, and Meditations are all equally prominent. Take a little time to think about what the app is for, who will be using it, and why they'd want it. Then, based on your conclusions, decide what's more important and less important. Make the more important things more prominent.
   
   
2. Information architecture - Think about how the way you're organizing your content aligns with the the steps your users will need to take in order to get from loading the app to accomplishing their reason for using the app. To start, make a list of all the screens in your app. Better yet, make it a flow chart that begins with the start screen. This is the map of your app as it currently is. Now, grab a colored marker. Thinking again about what the app is for, who will be using it, and why they'd want it, circle whichever screen you think is the one they want to get at. Why not have that be the first screen? Why not design the entire app around that screen? You might find that you want to eliminate, combine, and add screens.
   
   To help, I suggest making a persona before doing anything. Personas are invaluable for understanding who you're designing for and what their goals are. Here are some decent introductions to what makes for good personas:
   
   

• Personas: A Simple Introduction
  
• User Personas: What Are They and Why Use Them?
  
• A Closer Look at Personas
  
• Creating Personas
  
• Perfecting Your Personas
  
  No need to read all of those articles. I just wanted to provide a few so that you can pick whichever one or two makes the most sense to you. (For bonus points, pay close attention to how you are using the articles and why you prefer whichever ends up being your favorite.)
  
  If you can spare about $5, I highly recommend buying yourself a used copy of The Inmates Are Running The Asylum by Alan Cooper, the guy who invented personas as a design method. I wish somebody had recommended it to me when I started design school. I would've been a prodigy!
  
  Anyway, keep up the good work! I hope this post is helpful.
  
  P.S. Make a zip archive of all your work up until now and store it somewhere safe. Years from now, you'll like being able to look back at the process work of your first design.

So I don't think you should get too hung up on "enterprise architecture" at the moment, partially because you're still very early in your career, but also because enterprise architecture means a lot of things to a lot of different people. At this stage in your career, I really think you should focus mainly on SOLID code, core Object Oriented design concepts, and then understanding patterns. Good architectural strategies are built around all of those concepts, but they're also much much more than that.

For SOLID code, one of my favorite references is actually Dependency Injection in .Net by Mark Seemann. Although he does spend a good amount of time on DI, the recommendations that Mark makes for how to properly structure your code in order to take advantage of DI are very useful in understanding SOLID oriented design principles in general. The examples and code really work through the concepts well, so you get a great explanation followed by some well thought out code.

Clean Code by Uncle Bob is a great reference on how to structure well thought out code that touches on some architectural principles, but doesn't have that as the main focus of the book. Many of the topics in the book you'll find need to be addressed throughout a codebase.

As far as design patterns (which are different then architectural patterns), I don't think you can go wrong with the original Gang of 4 book , although I personally have a C# specific version, C# Design Pattern Essentials. I don't want to put too much emphasis on design patterns, because sometimes they get overused and applied too literally, but they are still very useful. I think the key to design patterns is not just knowing what they are, but determining where they might be applicable to your use case, and whether you should make any small adjustments or tweaks to them.

After you really have a rock solid base of working with code, then you can shift your focus on more architectural concerns. For that, it really depends on what problem your looking to solve, but Domain Driven Design (DDD) is a good way about understanding those problems and to structure the solutions in a well thought out, loosely coupled, and evolvable manner. That "central framework" that you referenced in your post is the business logic, and its the key focus of DDD

Depending on your level of knowledge:

Networking

Brocade IP Primer I haven't read it myself, but some guys around these parts that I have a lot of respect for recommend it highly for beginners.

CCENT Offical Cert Guide Good next step after above and gets you the CCENT cert which is half the ccna if you pass the test.

CCNA Official Cert Guide Next step after CCENT, gets you CCNA obviously if you pass the test.

If you need to know some basic wireless, I highly recommend the CWTS by CWNP. It is meant more as marketing/sales, but honestly its a really good entry into wifi. You can always follow it up with the CWNA after.

And an always favorite, the network warrior. This book really brings it all together for doing day-to-day networking for a ccna level. I haven't read all of it, but the majority I did read really clarified what I the CCNA brushed over.

As far as Microsoft and other tech's, I highly recommend getting your hands on CBT Nuggets (Yeah, its a bit expensive ~$1000 / year) and just start devouring as much as you can. Watch two or three shows a night? Sub one of them for a CBT nuggets vid. Just devour a few books and some vids and do your best to lab (either in vmware or with gear) and you'll be off to a really great start.

On a political level at work, I'd be fighting for some training (again cbtnuggets or the like) saying, hey tech is always moving forward and you need it to keep up and benefit the company. If you stay hungry you'll do just fine :)

Entrepreneur Reading List

1. Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
   
2. The Phoenix Project: A Novel about IT, DevOps, and Helping Your Business Win
   
3. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
   
4. The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
   
5. The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
   
6. Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
   
7. Ikigai
   
8. Reality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
   
9. Bootstrap: Lessons Learned Building a Successful Company from Scratch
   
10. The Marketing Gurus: Lessons from the Best Marketing Books of All Time
    
11. Content Rich: Writing Your Way to Wealth on the Web
    
12. The Web Startup Success Guide
    
13. The Best of Guerrilla Marketing: Guerrilla Marketing Remix
    
14. From Program to Product: Turning Your Code into a Saleable Product
    
15. This Little Program Went to Market: Create, Deploy, Distribute, Market, and Sell Software and More on the Internet at Little or No Cost to You
    
16. The Secrets of Consulting: A Guide to Giving and Getting Advice Successfully
    
17. The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth
    
18. Startups Open Sourced: Stories to Inspire and Educate
    
19. In Search of Stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters
    
20. Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup
    
21. Content Rules: How to Create Killer Blogs, Podcasts, Videos, Ebooks, Webinars (and More) That Engage Customers and Ignite Your Business
    
22. Maximum Achievement: Strategies and Skills That Will Unlock Your Hidden Powers to Succeed
    
23. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
    
24. Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant
    
25. Eric Sink on the Business of Software
    
26. Words that Sell: More than 6000 Entries to Help You Promote Your Products, Services, and Ideas
    
27. Anything You Want
    
28. Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
    
29. The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business
    
30. Tao Te Ching
    
31. Philip & Alex's Guide to Web Publishing
    
32. The Tao of Programming
    
33. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values
    
34. The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
    
    

    Computer Science Grad School Reading List
    

    
    

35. All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School
    
36. Introductory Linear Algebra: An Applied First Course
    
37. Introduction to Probability
    
38. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
    
39. Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society
    
40. Proofs and Refutations: The Logic of Mathematical Discovery
    
41. What Is This Thing Called Science?
    
42. The Art of Computer Programming
    
43. The Little Schemer
    
44. The Seasoned Schemer
    
45. Data Structures Using C and C++
    
46. Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs
    
47. Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
    
48. Concepts, Techniques, and Models of Computer Programming
    
49. How to Design Programs: An Introduction to Programming and Computing
    
50. A Science of Operations: Machines, Logic and the Invention of Programming
    
51. Algorithms on Strings, Trees, and Sequences: Computer Science and Computational Biology
    
52. The Computational Beauty of Nature: Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation
    
53. The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine
    
54. Computability: An Introduction to Recursive Function Theory
    
55. How To Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
    
56. Types and Programming Languages
    
57. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Elementary Algorithms
    
58. Computer Algebra and Symbolic Computation: Mathematical Methods
    
59. Commonsense Reasoning
    
60. Using Language
    
61. Computer Vision
    
62. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
    
63. Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
    
    

    Video Game Development Reading List
    

    
    

64. Game Programming Gems - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
    
65. AI Game Programming Wisdom - 1 2 3 4
    
66. Making Games with Python and Pygame
    
67. Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python
    
68. Bit by Bit

Yes and no... Like I mentioned, 90% of what I've learned is via brute-force problem solving. I start an app, I add some code, I fix the errors (by Googling a lot), and then repeat. That being said, I did eventually just start Googling the basics and working up from there.

For example, I read a book that basically covered this. I forgot what the name of the book was which is a shame. It covered each of the 4 layers of the internet in easy-to-understand terms. That helped me understand what is happening with my data when someone clicks submit.

I felt that networking sounded interested and I wanted to be a l33t h@x0r so I read, The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing. It wont' help much with web development, but it did show me some unique perspectives on networking. Pen testing is really just sitting around hoping someone fucked up. With cloud servers (ignoring the recent exploits), you have big companies monitoring your server for you. Applications are pretty well protected compared to an application 15 years ago. As long as you follow security conventions, you'll avoid script kiddies which account for most nuisances and you should be safe from real penetration attempts.

When I was just freelancing, I was desperate for work. I literally worked for free for three months. I helped a Coach setup a Raspberry Pi for his Hockey team. It displayed a calendar of their events and periodically displayed advertisements. Another guy wanted a website for his coffee shop, but that fell through after a lot of design went into it. I built a website for some guy's whiskey decanter he wanted to sell online.

One big leap I took was building a full-fledged production application with a small user base. A company hired me at $20/hr to be IT and simultaneously build an application to manage their leads, sales, and finances. So I did that as well. It's pretty shit - TBH. But they were paying like $1,000.00 a month in licensing for an application that only ran on ONE computer in the office which was dying every other week. So, I saved them money in the long and short term. Building a production application basically forced me to solve hundreds of real-world problems. User management, security, database size, server costs, server speed, etc... I had a small database ( ~10,000 ) rows. But it still showed me how quickly SQL queries blow up.

Ruby on Rails

While Googling a lot of issues, 90% of the security / user management issues brought me to this commonly referenced book. I never read it start to finish in order, but I should have. It's a great introduction. I'm positive it's somewhere in the FAQ of this subreddit.

JavaScript

I was so scared of JS. I didn't touch it for 1.5 years because of all of the online hate. Then, I learned Node.js. I followed the tutorials on Express and Node for a standard Hello World application. Then I made this piece of shit, "news flash" in about an hour to learn asynchronous calls to a simple news API.

But after that, I felt so free. After being hankered down by Rails conventions, I was so excited to run an application with just a few lines of code (and 1,000 of node_modules). I eventually started making JS asynchronous calls with Ruby. It made my applications appear much more responsive. No more pointless re-renders / redirects to data. Being able to hit an API endpoint in JS is super important.

A month ago, I learned React JS. It's a lot of work to get business applications up and going on React, but it's great for small applications. I recommend it. I learned by using React JS's website's tutorials and then following Redux's tutorials.

I never closely learned Vanilla JS. I was one of those JQuery fan-boys. That's changing now. I'm using vanilla JS for anything outside of a framework like React.

CSS

I am bad at CSS because I'm a bad person. I am still fumbling with it when it comes to making "clean CSS/SCSS". I generally just do what it takes. I am a big fan of the new display: grid standard.

I don't have resources for this.


___

TO be honest, I don't recommend Ruby on Rails as a first framework. Yes, it's easy once you learn the convention. But it's hard to break away from convention afterwards. The conventions basically put blinders on me. It wasn't until I learned JS / Node / PHP that I realized most web servers are a lot more custom than the RoR convention. They let you get your hands dirty with routes, database models, SQL, and more. RoR is my favorite web dev tool, but it's so opinionated that it doesn't work well as a teaching tool (IMO obviously).

EDIT Just read some other replies. Looks like they also feel that frameworks don't help! Maybe this trend should be the real answer to your question (without providing resources). Learn web development without a framework first. Then learn the framework second That's going to be my take-away.

Sorry if my reply sucks. I'm getting reamed at work by a new client. I am taking a break waiting for his reply after my latest updates, but I don't have a lot of time to revise.

> So on my LinkedIn profile/resume could I put a link to my online portfolio?

Yes. And you need to have your resume available in some format on your portfolio site too. I suggest Word and PDF.

Some suggestions regarding LinkedIn: spend a few hours reading through some of the tutorials online about how to set up your profile. If I've spent more than five seconds on your LinkedIn profile and it's not blindingly obvious to me that you're looking for an entry-level tech writing job, you're doing it wrong. There are also flags you can set in your profile so that you show up in the searches that recruiters do when they're looking for candidates. I know this varies somewhat by region, but where I live if you're in tech and you're not on LinkedIn, you're invisible.

> The classes. Would they benefit me more once I am employed and not really to leverage a job?

Again, some places will look at that and see it as a sign that you're interested in the profession and are working to improve your skills. Other places won't care. If you can, I'd say go for it. More knowledge is better.

> Why do you have some that you print and hand out? Why not just include them all in the online portfolio.

In the interviews for my current job, not everyone had seen my online portfolio and out of the four people I interviewed with, only one came into the room with a way to look online (he had an iPad with him). Having some writing samples I could hand out and go over with the interviewers was really helpful. It allowed them to ask questions about why I did this or that thing, and let me dive deeper into how I thought through putting documentation together. Also, have multiple copies of each writing sample. One of my interviewers took one of them with him, meaning I couldn't show that one to the next interviewers.

More about personas here: Personas | usability.gov. The book The Inmates Are Running The Asylum is the canonical work on the subject. I have this book, which is based on the work in that book:The Essential Persona Lifecycle.

Regarding my comments on the portfolio - I suggest WordPress because it's fairly easy to set up. It's got an easy install, and most any web hosting company should have it available for their customers. The domain name is up to you - I think that something like "yourname.com" is more professional than "yourname.wordpress.com," but for a portfolio it might not matter.

WordPress has a WYSWIG editor built in that you can enter and format your content with. I suggest a static page because blogs are usually in reverse chronological order and only show snippets of each entry.

Of course, you don't have to use WordPress for this. If some other platform, such as Squarespace or Wix or whatever works better for you, then use that. I know people who have built their portfolio site by hand coding the HTML and CSS so that they could get it to look exactly like they wanted to. My portfolio is hosted on GitHub Pages, using a modified version of Tom Johnson's Documentation Theme for Jekyll.

> Do your guides have indices?

No. Nothing I do is long enough to have an index. Creating a good index is a pain in the ass, and is generally something that should be done manually. There is an entire profession dedicated to indexing, actually.

Just some I like:

Dev

• [You Don't Know Javascript (series)(]https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS). Short and sweet mostly. Well written. Some are still pending publishing but there are a couple available now. I believe you can read them for free online, I just like paper books and wanted to show some support.
  
  
• Elequent Javascript (second release coming in november). Current version here if you are impatient. I have not personally read it yet, waiting for the next revision. I recommend it due to the high regard it has in the web community.
  
  
• Professional JavaScript for Web Developers. Sometimes called the bible of js. Big ole book. I have not read it through and through, but have enjoyed the parts I have perused.
  
  

  Design
  

  
  (I am weak in the design side, so take these recommendation with a grain of salt. I recommend them off of overall industry cred they receive and my own personal taste for them.)
  
  

• The Elements of Typographic Style. Low level detail into the art and science behind typography.
  
  
• Don't Make Me Think, Revisited. I read the original, not the new one that I linked. It is an easy read (morning commute on the train was perfect for it) and covers UX stuff in a very easy to understand way. My non-designer brain really appreciated it.
  
  below are books I have not read but our generally recommended to people asking this question
  
  
• About Face.
  
  
• The Design of Everyday Things.
  
  
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.
  
  
  You can see a lot of these are theory based. My 0.02 is that books are good for theory, blogs are good for up to date ways of doing things and tutorial type stuff.
  
  Hope this helps!
  
  
  Battery is about to die so no formatting for you! I'll add note later if I remember.
  
  EDIT: another real quick.
  
  EDIT2: Eh, wound up on my computer. Added formatting and some context. Also added more links because I am procrastinating my actual work I have to do (picking icons for buttons is so hard, I never know what icon accurately represents whatever context I am trying to fill).
  

Okay so there are a couple of good places to start with malware. The first is Malware Analyst's Cookbook. It is a pretty decent beginner level resource.

From there, Practical Malware Analysis is excellent and goes a lot deeper.

For free resources I've heard good things about Dr. Fu's Malware Analysis Tutorials.

You will need to have a strong understanding of reverse engineering. I like Practical Reverse Engineering or Reverse Engineering for Beginners. The latter is free.

With RE comes assembly. I learned from the free book PC Assembly Language. The RE books should have some info on assembly as well.

You should also know the systems programming API and OS internals for whatever OS you're interested in. This is most likely Windows, so I recommend Windows System Programming and Windows Internals. You can find similar books for Linux and macOS too. Having a good understanding of C and C++ is helpful for this. Also get comfortable using your assembly level debugger on your OS of choice. WinDBG, x64dbg, and OllyDBG are all good on Windows. GDB is pretty much the default on Linux, and LLDB on macOS.

I also highly recommend some scripting language, whether it's Python, Ruby, Powershell or whatever for hacking up your own tools.

Lastly, there is a list on GitHub with a ton of helpful links.

I think that's enough for now.

As far as demand it's hard to say and probably depends a lot on where you're from. It's certainly not like the demand for webdevs but there's also not nearly as many people with the skillset. I'm not a malware analyst myself, I'm more focused on security research and embedded development.

I know those skills are especially high in demand around the Washington, DC area with defense contractors and government agencies. Especially if you can get a security clearance. Most other security firms I know of are always looking for good people with strong reversing and OS internals knowledge.

Let me know if you have any questions and I will try to answer.

This is out of my league in terms of knowledge, as I don't know the way Unix security is implemented too well but I will say this, syncing Windows permissions to Unix will be easy, just group the write permissions into Windows into a write permission on Unix, the other way though is going to be considerably hard unless you start working with the Unix version of extended attributes, which I certainly don't know about.

For information on the Windows Security system, and how ACLs work, then the Windows Internals 6th Edition books will be your best bet, Mark Russinovich, David Solomon and Alex Ionescu practically know the OS inside and out and they are a great read for learning more about the insides of Windows. Security is in part 1 chapter 6 on page 509 or 487 depending on your reader, but it helps to read through both just in case there are some additional details listed elsewhere.

I've linked the books below on the US version of Amazon, if you are in a different country it should be available using the search box on their, additionally you can probably

Part 1: http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Edition-Developer-Reference/dp/0735648735/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1405718207&sr=8-1&keywords=windows+internals+7th+edition
Part 2: http://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Edition-Developer-Reference/dp/0735665877/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1405718207&sr=8-2&keywords=windows+internals+7th+edition

Additionally I think Russinovich has a public email that you can contact him on to discuss stuff if you like. Apologies that I couldn't help a bit more but like I said, the requirements are far beyond my scope of knowledge.

Hi! It seems like a lot of these responses are process-heavy, so I'll be digging into some very practical, immediately-actionable tips.

1. Split up the code by deciding the next thing you want to build. If you don't start with this, you'll be on the road to ineffective open source projects (in which case, you should just jump on one of those).
   
   As an example, if you're going to build the most awesome soccer game in history, you can't just start with the effects of the ball spinning and the many people in the stadium and the hair effects on the players and the I hope you get my point. Build pong. And even then, know what that means by breaking it down, which could look like this:
   
   

• a rendered object or set of pixels that can travel in one direction;
  
• a rendered object or set of pixels that go up or down if you press a key.
  
  Look at that, now you have something that each of you can work on independently and cleanly. Then you'll realize the ball (first item) needs to "bounce" off the paddle (second item), and you start to merge code. By this point, you will have more ideas about what to do next. Always decide on that next thing to build, try to make it modular, and then you can assign and tackle it separately.
  
  

2. The "base" code nowadays is usually some pre-existing engine. Since you mention C++, I did some OGRE 3D before that is a great example of the kind of stuff out there: it offers ways to put things on the screen, playing sounds from your computer, etc., without you having to rewrite all that functionality before.
   
   Look up and choose a game engine that suits you, your skills, your preference (based on your preliminary research), and your buddy. One of the engineers on one of my old teams was building an engine that sounded really great, so you might want to check out "Super Evil Mega Corp" and send them an email. Tell 'em Danny sent ya, I don't even know if they're done yet. :P
   
   Once you have your engine and know you can put it up in your repository, you might want to use something like github.com to set up your project. The Getting Started steps guide you really well if you don't know how to set this up, so I won't waste your time with re-hashing the already-smooth steps here.
   
   
3. I personally haven't done C++ in Sublime, and I'm mostly working with objective C and Java right now, so I can't really advise you on this. Hope someone pipes up for ya!
   
   
4. If you're an engineer, I suggest checking out one of these books under the following circumstances.
   
   

• For easy reading because you want to read something for fun, check out [The Inmates Are Running the Asylum] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum/dp/0672326140). This'll help you narrow in on true value without getting deluded into just building cool stuff blindly as an engineer.
  
• For more serious reading because you're serious about applying this stuff professionally, check out The Lean Startup. This guy will boost you 10 years into your future engineer self with the insight around deciding "the next thing" to build and how you can verify that it's the RIGHT thing to build. If it's not the right thing to build, you end up wasting little of your and your buddy's time building things that'll leave you both sad and failed with only the ability to say "Well, at least we learned something" and nothing more.

The CCNA one is in very high demand. I took part in a lecture held by Todd Lammle at Birmingham City University a few months ago. He basically said the best jobs to get into right now are communications, virtualization and web aplication development. It's kind of obvious really considering the trend towards cloud computing, on demand services and most importantly converged networks.

If you want to do the CCNA I would recommend skipping CompTIA N+ all together. But be warned CCNA is not something you can jump into that easily. From my experience, which isn't that much but it is a little, best books for the CCNA are the ICND1, ICND2 and Todd Lammle's CCNA Study Guide. I strongly recommend taking a course for the CCNA as the practice is not easily achieved at home (lack of equipment unless you have money to spend on second hand cisco routers, switches, cables, etc.).

Other than that, best of luck!

As for the Microsoft ones... meh, a book and a few virtual machines should get you sorted.

Awesome! I kind of fell into the job. I was initially hired as a web developer, and didn't even know what BI was, and then got recruited by one of the BI managers and fell in love. To me, it is one of the few places in IT where what you create will directly impact the choices a business will make.

Most of what I do is ETL work (taking data from multiple systems, and loading them into a single warehouse), with a few cubes (multidimensional data analaysis) and SSRS report models (logical data model built on top of a relational data store used for ad hoc report creation). I also do a bit of report design, and lots of InfoPath 2010 + SharePoint 2010 custom development.

We use the entire Microsoft BI stack here, so SQL Server Integration (SSIS), Analysis (SSAS), and Reporting Services (SSRS). Microsoft is definitely up and coming in the BI world, but you might want to try to familiarize yourself with Oracle BI, Business Objects, or Cognos. Unfortunately, most of these tools are very expensive and not easy to get up and running. I would suggest you familiarize yourself with the concepts, and then you will be able to use any tool to apply them.

For data warehousing, check out the Kimball books:

Here and here and here

For reporting, get good with data visualizations, anything by Few or Tufte, like:

Here and here

For integration, check these out:

Here and here

Also, if you're interested in Microsoft BI (SSIS, SSAS, SSRS) check out this site. It has some awesome videos around SSAS that are easy to follow along with.

Also, check out the MSDN BI Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/bi/

Currently at work, but if you have more questions, feel free to shoot me a message!

In that case...
You may want to wait for the 5th edition of UNIX and Linux System Administration, as it should release near the end of this year and they don't release new versions that often.

A good way to get started building a college library is to see what the curriculum for the school is and what books are required by professors. Often other colleges will list their book recommendations for the courses online to get an idea of where to start looking. (I know my school has an online bookstore that lists the books for each course and is open to the public)

At least one or two good books in each of those categories, to get a rough idea to start:

• General Programming (A book for each core language, though a lot of information is online as well)
  C, C++, Java, Python and Ruby are popular to start with
  
  
• Web Development (a wide area, but an html/css/javascript text is basic)
  
  
• System Programming (Windows and Linux are wildly different, should probably have both even if not taught - though you already have one linux system programming text recommended, 'the linux programming interface')
  https://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Programming-UNIX-Environment-3rd/dp/0321637739
  https://www.amazon.com/Programming-Paperback-Addison-Wesley-Microsoft-Technology/dp/0134382250
  
  
• Computer Networking
  you already have a couple here
  
  
• Algorithms - the selected book (Introduction to Algorithms) is good, sometimes used for two courses, a complementary text wouldn't hurt too
  
  
• Artificial Intelligence
  https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-Intelligence-Modern-Approach-3rd/dp/0136042597
  
  
• Numerical Methods
  
  
• System Administration (Windows and Linux are different, the recommended text is good for Linux - here's a windows one)
  https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-architecture-management/dp/0735684189 (coming soon)
  
  
• Parallel Computing
  
  
• Distributed Computing
  
  
• Operating Systems - I personally like Stallings' text, though Tanenbaum and Silberschatz is popular too
  
  
• Databases - Nearly all the database books are not that good, in my opinion, but still should have something
  
  
• Cryptography
  
  
• Computer Security
  
  Edit: On second thought, pretty much every college teaches system programming on linux - so perhaps just the linux texts would be adequate for that.

check out my colleges course material online, itt.century.edu, Network Fundamentals 1,2,3 and Network Integration correspond to CCNA1-4 respectively. I used that course material for all of my CCNA courses, If you want to learn about security try looking at :

ITT-2020 Network Security Fundamentals


ITT-2025 Firewalls and Network Security

Do this security stuff after going through the CCNA stuff or else you'll be lost

Also here's the latest Packet Tracer software (5.3.2) along with the tutorial, Please note there may be certain things that you cannot do with the packet tracer software in the CCNA curriculum (I believe there's some CCNA4 stuff)
(packet tracer)
http://www.mediafire.com/?477o7btmzdw7sig

I would also reccommend the book here:


http://www.mediafire.com/?2i8nijmfna8ad1r

It's the cisco command guide for the CCNA curriculum, it helps if you are configuring something and can't remember the command.
If you want to have something to go hand in hand and be a side reference, I would reccomend Todd Lammle's Book here:


http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Certified-Network-Associate-CD-ROM/dp/0470901071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320860539&sr=8-1

One of my teachers recommends this book for his CCNA1 course because you will use it all through the courses.



Hope this helps! good luck!

The best way to learn anything depends on your learning style. Some people learn better by reading, some by watching videos, and some by doing. It's important to know how you learn effectively.

That said, my recommendation is to find a routine task you do regularly and figure out how to do it automatically with PowerShell. Do you archive old report files to a specific directory structure? Learn about Copy-Item. Do you manage Exchange, SCCM, O365, anything like that? They all have automation support with PowerShell. There are even community modules that support a lot of third-party products - for example, the JiraPS project allows you to manage JIRA items with PowerShell, including creating new issues, commenting on existing ones, and closing them out.

If you prefer reading, the book Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is often recommended - but it's very important that you actually follow along with the exercises in the book. Type them and run them on a live computer whenever possible.

If you prefer videos, I suggest the Microsoft Virtual Academy series on PowerShell. These are a bit long, but they do a great job of teaching you both concepts and practical knowledge.

Hope that helps!

Buy a decent book on pen testing using kali. A great starting point for beginners: https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Hacking-Penetration-Testing-Second/dp/0124116442

I'm 30 years old and currently working 30% in pen testing, and 70% with developing electronic warfare systems at the most reputable cyber security company in Scandinavia. I wish I had found this interest at your age! If you put some effort into it and have a genuine interest in the field, the possibilities are truly endless.

It might be a boring answer, but seriously.. Read! Don't get stuck playing around with tools, but read up on the subject as well. The book I linked is a very easy read, and will get you started with the practical aspects very quickly. Once you have the basics down you might also want to check out "The Hackers Playbook 2". If you find reading tedious I suggest enrolling in a course on udemy.com, that way you can alternate reading with video lectures.

Good luck! The industry needs more young and hungry minds :)

Let me start by telling you that InfoSec jobs are in-demand now more than ever and that's not likely to change as more and more of the world are starting to use computers, computers continue advancing, etc. So, barring any sort of impending dark ages and assuming you're putting enough effort into your education and continuing education, you should be able to work your way up without too much trouble. Focus on getting your foot in the door and be professional.

 

Now then, I'm currently an Information Security Analyst in the US, so this information may be completely irrelevant to you out there in NZ. I initially only graduated with an Associate's (2-year) in Information Security & Computer Forensics. I managed to get my job before I had even graduated as I worked hard in school (a stressful amount, really) and knew how to conduct myself in a professional manner. They actually paid for my certifications, and a lot of companies out there will as well. Here's the tiered structure we followed - all InfoSec related certifications:

 

Within the first 6 months, we are sent to training to obtain our CompTIA Security+ certification. This is roughly a 1-hour, multiple choice test and you need at least an 80% to pass. I would recommend any of these three books to study from:

This is the book that my company had provided me to study from

This is the book my friend had given me. Both her and I studied from this and passed successfully

This is the book we are currently learning from in my Bachelor's program

Take your pick, they'll all achieve the same essentials, mostly. I am awful at studying and mainly just crammed the few topics I wasn't sure about in the night/morning before my test and passed with an 86%.

 

Next, we're sent to get our GSEC, which is the GIAC Security Essentials Certification. The Security+ focuses on several main topics and gets in-depth with the information, whereas GSEC covers a wide span of topics but doesn't get very in-depth. This test takes about 5 hours to complete also, compared to the 45 minutes that it took to take the Security+. It's important to note that the GSEC, while 5 hours long, is open-book. My company sent me to a training class that provided 6 different books to cover any topic on the GSEC, however you also need an index. The books themselves don't have a table-of-contents, so you need to make an index yourself that covers just about every topic on every page. In my case, a coworker sent me his that he had used, and it turns out it was out of date so not a single page was correct. Much to my own surprise, I passed with an 82% (the minimum passing score is 74%) so while the index/books are important - they're not completely necessary as long as you paid attention in your classes. It should also be noted that I did not actually study for this. Most of it was just common-sense stuff like "Which of the following does an Intrusion Prevention Device do?" and knowledge that I had obtained from school/work.

 

After GSEC is the GCIH, or, GIAC Certified Incident Handler. I haven't taken this yet, nor the next one, so I can't speak to their difficulty or process, but I've been told by other analysts it's roughly the same as GSEC, just different information and more hands-on like capture the flag runs.

 

Finally, after GCIH, we are sent to get our GCIA, or, GIAC Certified Intrusion Analyst. Same with GCIH, I have not been sent to obtain this cert just yet, but I can only imagine it's somewhat similar to the last 2 as they follow GIAC's tiered structure.

 

So TLDR - as a current InfoSec Analyst - the recommended certs are Security+, GSEC, GCIH, and GCIA. There are many more certs out there, though, these are just the ones my company values currently.

 

Good luck!

Hi there!

A basic understanding of the different server roles and the technologies behind them would be helpful; Active Directory, DNS (as it pertains to the MS side of the house), IIS, etc. A number of 'Windows Server' books will help you here.

I assume you are familiar with the OS, but you might want to brush up on it. Books like Windows Internals would help you there, but might be deeper than you need.

In terms of the various tools you might find yourself using, I keep a list of tools and link to a number of other 'tool compilations.' On the Windows side, SysInternals, PowerShell, and a number of others on the list are critical.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, learn PowerShell. I keep a list of resources I've found helpful in learning and using PowerShell here. This includes cheat sheets, books, blogs, videos, communities and more. I assume you have some understanding of scripting. If so, pick up PowerShell in Action v2. It covers PowerShell in depth for anyone who has familiarity with scripting or programming. If you prefer videos, Microsoft just provided two full day PowerShell courses (see Getting Started... and Advanced Tools... videos section of my post). You will note a few jokes about calling Bruce Payette - this is why you want to pick up PowerShell in Action.

Good luck!

> I'm not sure i'm following you here, in the sens that aren't I the consumer when it comes to this project?

Taking the “You” Out of User: My Experience Using Personas

There's a natural tendency to look at the site as your site. And everything about the business worked out and perfected to the Nth degree. Taking advantage of that, a lot of developers shun anything about results and make you responsible for anything they bring online. Technical bugs, they'll fix. Everything about business or human factors ... as far as many are concerned, that's all on you.

Too many sites function in the strictest most ludicrously technical sense of the term. They just fail to achieve business or user goals. And the lower you go on price, the more effectiveness is entirely on your shoulders.

However, a website interaction is not exactly like your face to face interaction. And, for it to work well enough to replace your in-person process, you might have to rethink that process for the new medium you are transferring that process to.

A whole lot of that will be influenced by how your clients have gotten used to using, say, online banking. And other online conventions they are familiar with, and simply do not welcome anything that forces them to relearn an entire new interaction pattern.

You want this process automated. That comes across loud and clear. What I don't hear a word about is what your client wants. It is entirely possible to manufacture an end-to-end fantasy about what you'd like clients to find useable and worthwhile that few to no clients actually agree with.

And Jawbone has discovered this fact: They are not the consumer of the project. The market is very unforgiving in beating you up when you make this mistake. That's one of the reasons for the links.

>So you recommend that I either team up with something already existent, or that I try to find a good team to work with?

Either way, make it plain you are merely handling the money -- your clients are judge, jury, and if need be executioner. In other words, if the site does not actually replace the process you want to automate, it's a failure.

Next, have a clear idea of your client and their goals. Not the goals you'd prefer them to have, their actual goals.

Examples can make for better understanding. Let's take a seemingly simple element like the login. Read The God Login.

Discuss this article with whoever you're working with. Always try to turn the discussion away from features and technology to what your named target user wants in order to accomplish the goal or goals you identify.

Every business owner is keen on "knowing their customer." Why is it so very few ever want to learn about them and have their assumptions questioned, tested, and learn something new in the process.

Make part of the project at least two rounds of testing, discovery, and redesign with users.

My additional suggestion is seek to develop some very desirable advantage so your client base does not see this as simply you automating your process in order to make more money. Again, I see what you get out of this -- not what clients get.

A lot of business owners have incredible marketing myopia. They'll spin this as "well, I can serve more clients this way. ... So win-win." Uh huh ... NO. You might find a whole lot of clients chose you because you do in person face-to-face interaction.

Technology is great at presenting solutions that aren't solutions for problems you don't have. And the more you're focusing all your attention on price, the less you're paying attention to whether or not the thing you pay for actually happens.

People hear you get what you pay for, nod knowingly, then walk right off a cliff. Paying for something that does not do what you're paying for is the most expensive waste of money.

Somehow you still feel cheated. No matter how little you paid. Go figure.

== A Good Read ==

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity you do not need a book on programming, or code, you need to know the coder mindset and how to manage the project.

First of all; this is a CMS template that almost every developer uses so you should be clear about that up front. Design is a skill that takes many years to become good at and it is something that everyone takes for granted that is not a designer. If you are serious about it I will give you some advice.

• Read Alan Coopers book The Inmates are Running the Asylum. I refer to this book all the time and it's a great place to start.
  
  
• Smashing Magazine is a wealth of information and their twitter feed is excellent.
  
  
• Compare your designs to ones that are highly successful and held in high regard by designers (see Smashing Magazine). Make an honest assessment of your designs compared to theirs.
  
  If you follow these steps in that order you will be well on your way and know what to do next.

I'm not sure why it's not running, but you should think about changing your if-elseif to a switch statement. Here is a link that will explain it more. In this script it won't make much of a difference, but eventually you will begin to do more things with Powershell, and it's better to start with good practices before making bad habits.

I recommend this book. I haven't read it, but I have heard many good reviews on it from many different people.

Hope that helps some, and enjoy Powershell. It will really assist you as an admin, and it is very powerful once you start to understand the basics of how to work with it.

Learning to hack, with little knowledge of it, will be a journey. You have some background in CS which will definitely help.

Learning to hack, from scratch, is where things become difficult. Where do you start? How do you learn? Luckily there's a vast amount of resources to learn from online.

To start learning is a matter of what you prefer.

Like watching videos/lectures?
https://www.udemy.com/penetration-testing/
https://www.udemy.com/learn-ethical-hacking-from-scratch/

Prefer reading books on the subject?
https://www.amazon.com/Penetration-Testing-Hands-Introduction-Hacking/dp/1593275641
https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Hacking-Penetration-Testing-Second/dp/0124116442

Most universities have Ethical Hacking / Cyber Security courses, can always check there.

I'd recommend learning Python, SSH, and the Linux Terminal in general to get started. But learning how those apply to hacking is a matter of learning and practice.

Hope this helped, and good luck!

I read this book, it is an amazing one however it is pretty big and might be hard for you since you are not advanced as you said.

On my opinion, I highly recommend this book

https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Hacking-Penetration-Testing-Second/dp/0124116442/ref=sr_1_18?ie=UTF8&qid=1481534935&sr=8-18&keywords=hacking+books

It is easy to read and follow. And the way the book was written makes you never stop reading, I promise. (: good luck on you education my friend I hope this helps.

Okay, /u/kd9333, don't take this the wrong way, but have you considered brushing up on some POSH basics, maybe something like PowerShell in a Month of Lunches. You have been asking a lot of questions about this script (and general PowerShell questions) in the past few weeks, and honestly, some of your responses are literally you asking people to do 100% of the work for you, even after they point you in the right direction.

Many people are willing to help you learn PowerShell, but many of the questions are you asking are pretty basic, and they would likely be answered if you took the time to really learn the basics of the language. That, plus a few questions that look like homework make me question if this is just us doing schoolwork for you or if this is an actual question you need assistance with.

To your question, you don't need to type your date field as [datetime] when you send it to Out-File. It's already in that format. You will likely want to convert it to a string before hand using either a method or a format operator so that it is in the format you want.

I see that others have answered the question well. And I suspect that you will head down this path, but just in case you aren’t considering it - I highly recommend learning PowerShell. even just basic commands. It will open up so many opportunities for you to help make your life easier as an admin in general, not just SCCM. If you plan to do other things besides SCCM later in, having a good understanding of PowerShell will be a very marketable skill for you to have.

I highly recommend PowerShell in a Month of Lunches as a great book to get you started.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_YyqRDb82T8T6V

https://www.codecademy.com/

Codecademy is also a good resource for learning to code in general - Python is a great cross-platform language. I've honestly never encountered a great batch resource for learning; my advice is to learn PowerShell, as /u/Oodeer suggusted, and learn the fundamentals of programming/scripting. Once you understand how code works, then googling how to do something in a specific language is pretty easy and it's just looking up the syntax/commands for the language you're using.

If you're interested in PowerShell, I have three books on my shelf at all times:

Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month-of-lunches-second-edition

Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches: https://www.manning.com/books/learn-powershell-toolmaking-in-a-month-of-lunches

And a PowerShell cookbook. I use this one: https://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/1449320686

These are all my personal recommendations, but I highly encourage learning a language like PowerShell or Python, which are going to be far more powerful should you ever move into a Systems Administration/Engineering role, or even implement application deployments/OS provisioning and things like that on a large scale.

For my situation, my helpdesk use scripts I've created on a daily basis to make new users, terminate users, and check on what locks people out. Small things like this make a 10-30 minute task take seconds which frees up a lot of time. If you're really wanting to learn powershell and have very little knowledge of it, I recommend picking up "PowerShell in a Month of Lunches". It will give you a good idea on how to export and import data. If I remember correctly it also gets into loops which helps immensely.

PowerShell takes time to learn, but if you want to learn it, I recommend googling how to do whatever task you're trying to do in powershell. Maybe don't do it at the time the task needs to be completed if you're understaffed and overwhelmed. But definitely go back and learn how to do it in PowerShell. After some time doing this, you'll be surprised at what you can accomplish when it comes to tasks involving all of your users or at least a good handful of them.

Depends on what you want to do — UX is a pretty broad field. I'm a user interface designer with a UX background, which means I've designed sites, web apps and mobile apps, but there's plenty of UX positions that don't require any sort of visual design or front-end development experience.

For example, there are labs that conduct user research and interviews, run focus groups, or do user testing. Hell, you could even apply to be a user tester at a site like usertesting.com. Not sure how much money you can make from that, but it's something.

Also, there are UX positions that go from beginning research and discovery for projects up through the wireframing, which doesn't require any visual design experience. You'll usually hand off your UX work to a designer or a developer to implement.

Some good books to read about UX are:

• Don't Make Me Think by Steve Krug
  
• Rocket Surgery Made Easy by Steve Krug
  
• About Face 3 by a couple people
  
• The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
  
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
  
• The Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett
  
  There's also plenty of online resources about UX. Smashing Magazine has a ton of articles on it.
  
  If you are good at puzzles, love solving complex problems, and contain any shred of empathy, user experience could be a good field for you.

I'm telling you... you do not have to wait to become a web designer especially if you have any CS chops. It sounds like you need some kind of validation lol? In design you have to be an entrepreneur, design your own experience, find out some people who are doing design x software email them... surprise them, designers love surprises and something different... make your own luck.

As far as Amazon good books, you really want to aim for a whole view of design at this point. Think of it like you wouldn't learn run before you can walk, there is A LOT out there.

• https://www.amazon.com/Thinking-Systems-Donella-H-Meadows/dp/1603580557/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034268&sr=8-1&keywords=thinking+in+systems
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Inmates-Are-Running-Asylum-Products/dp/0672326140/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034307&sr=8-3&keywords=alan+cooper
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Media-Extensions-Marshall-McLuhan/dp/0262631598/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034386&sr=8-1&keywords=marshall+mcluhan+understanding+media
  
• https://www.amazon.com/Design-Everyday-Things-Revised-Expanded/dp/0465050654/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466034432&sr=8-1&keywords=don+norman

Would I create new lines below that one for the other OUs?

No, absolutely not. :)

The line I wrote is all you need.I'll try to explain it line by line.

​

$data = Import-Csv -Delimiter "," -Path C:\temp\data.csv

This line will import csv data from path C:\temp\data.csv into variable $data and it will use , as delimiter.Run it on your data and then run just $data to check what is inside your new variable.

$OU = ($data | select OU -Unique).OU

This line will select only OU column from your csv data in variable $data and it will select only unique values, so if you have users that are in same OU it will not duplicate it.After you run it check what's inside your variable by call it $OU.

​

Now we come to foreach loop.

foreach ($item in $OU) { New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $item -Path "dc=contoso, dc=com" }

It does exactly what it say, for each item, value inside variable OU it will run following code

New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $item -Path "dc=contoso, dc=com"

So let pretend you have this inside your variable OU.$OU

Finance
Accounting
Sales
IT
Quality

​

If we were to ran this code:

foreach ($item in $OU) { Write-Host "test" }

This would be the result in my terminal
test
test
test
test
test

Since we have 5 items inside $OU and command Write-Host "test" will be ran 5 times.

Now if I were to ran this code:

​

foreach ($item in $OU) { Write-Host "$item" }

This would be the result in my terminal

Finance
Accounting
Sales
IT
Quality

​

It will take each item from OU and output it to terminal.

​

I hope that makes it clear for you why all you need is this one line.

New-ADOrganizationalUnit -Name $item -Path "dc=contoso, dc=com"

​

If you really want to learn powershell and not just finish you project I strongly suggest this book:

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160

​

It's great book, really accessible and written in such approachable way that I guarantee if you finish it, you will understand and know powershell basics. :)

If you are more video guy this is old but great video series that will explain powershell basics.Big plus it's Jeffrey Snover talking about powershell. Can't beat that with a baseball bat :)

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyJiOytEPs4etH7Ujq7PU7jlOlHL-9RmV

Your example isn't dependency injection, it's service locator pattern which is different. Service locator IMO is a piece of crap, you can find a popular post against service locator here.

I built a large game backend at first without using proper DI. It really bit me in the ass because it made our code extremely difficult to test and keep decoupled as the app got larger. Definitely not all IoC containers are on par with each other and some of the IoC crowd goes a bit too far with patterns at times. However, without using DI your code will turn into a mess. You don't really need an IoC container for smaller projects but they should be relatively light weight and a good container is easy to use so I'd always recommend using one.

If you want a good book on the topic, check out Dependency Injection in .NET. Though not PHP specific, it does a great job at explaining how DI works and the core concepts apply to any language.

Yes, most Gov jobs require at least Sec+.

Depending on how much you did as an LEO you may look into computer forensics. Network Security etc. You may also want to beef up knowledge of networking as well. So either the Net+ and/or CCNE cert.

Books are always a good place to start. I don't know about this one but have read a few other books by this publisher that have been pretty good.

Ones I have read/skimmed:

• Social Enginnering Penetration Testing
  
• The Basics of Inormation Security: Understanding the Fundamentals of InfoSec in theory and Practice
  
• The Basics of Hacking and Penetration Testing
  
  
  Haven't picked this one up myself, but it has good reviews
  
  
• RTFM: Red Team Field Manual
  
• The Hacker Playbook
  
  
  

I appreciate you asking! I love sharing knowledge and resources.

I learned by using PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, and also a wonderful subreddit called /r/PowerShell.

On top of that, I looked at other people's work whether it was on GitHub, Reddit, or YouTube, and I learned how the language worked. Remember, everything in PowerShell is an object. If you remember that, it'll help you a lot!

I also used Microsoft's Virtual Academy for PowerShell, located here: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-courses/getting-started-with-microsoft-powershell-8276

If you have any other questions please don't hesitate to ask.

> do I need any base knowledge before taking the course

Man that's a loaded question. The other fun thing is coming from a home support environment w/consumer electronics to business level hardware/applications is often miles apart. Because SCCM or an answer file is not like installing a game or driver on a relative's computer.

Any kind of administration is an open-ended, always learning endeavor. once you get a handle on a technology it's replaced or improved upon. I have the old NT certifications that are completely irrelevant in the face of Active Directory. Even the old PDC/BDC paradigm is shelved. So just take the course and everytime you encounter a concept, technology, software, or acronym you don't know - research it. Follow the comments here in r/sysadmin. You'll see an original post that you have no clue about and the comments will just take you further down the rabbit hole.
I'd say if anything, get The Practice of System and Network Administration. Maybe even CompTIA's Security+ because while it's referring to best practices for security it touches on a wide range of administrative concepts.

I started in 1993 with a pile of slackware diskettes and a desire to have a Sparcstation when my boss only gave me a PC. I don't think anything today can provide the kind of hot, crucible experience of getting the system up, X running and the networking configured + dial-up for home.

One of the better books I've read is The Practice of System and Network Administration. It has nothing particular to do with Linux, but lays out how to set up and run an IT department. When I worked at smaller companies early in my career, I used the book to guide the development of systems and processes using Linux.

For example, have you tried to set up a network installation server using kickstart or Debian preseed to allow you to automate server configurations. What about using kvm to practice setting up different kinds of infrastructure servers without hacking your main box? Then maybe use that new bit of infrastructure to try and automatically create custom images for deployment on Amazon Web Services.

This takes a couple of older kickboxes and $20 on Amazon to learn a ton about systems deployment and management. Volunteer to help bands or schools or community groups set up email, web or media distribution. Read lots of code, find and fix lots of bugs, and just enjoy soaking in all the cool stuff you can do!

if you're just getting started, the absolute best thing you can do is read this book cover to cover: http://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration/dp/0201702711 it's a really easy read with a great overview of the thought process of a sysadmin and a great general overview of the job. beyond that, try to get a job in a helpdesk or network operations center and learn as much as possible.

also, you want to look at MCTS in whatever you interested in and not MCSA anymore because that's the newer version. http://www.microsoft.com/learning/en/us/certification/mcts.aspx

I'd also recommend Windows PowerShell Cookbook Scripting but it isn't cheap ether. I've always found cookbooks useful because they are just a bunch of examples of how to create tooling once you know the foundation for anything. I'd also recommend reading some of the Powershell MVPs blogs they do some excellent content for the community. I learn a lot from them as well.

I really like the books /u/joerod suggested.

Links:

PowerShell in a Month of lunches

Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches


For the MVA PowerShell courses:

MVA PowerShell - A plethora of good resources


Good luck! PowerShell is incredibly helpful and fun in both work and every day life!

Edit: Other recommendations from my old self

So I pulled up a few things:

I found CompTIA's (Computing Technology Industry Association) Wiki Page. They have a list of the different certifications they offer and it's quite extensive.

Then I just found some general info on what Security+ is.

Finally I pulled up the Security+ Book on Amazon, it looks like they're on the 4th Edition so that would be the one you would want to get.

You may also want to look at what your college offer's course wise because they might have a class or 2 on Computer/IT Security and those can always go on your resume as "related coursework". After looking at the Security+ it does say that it recommends 2 years of experience in IT Security before taking the test, just a heads up. A lot of these certifications help your resume out and they will help you stand out above the other CIS grads that have a CIS degree and some IT experience. Anyways, hope this helps somewhat.

Powershell. Think Python, but with more obnoxious syntax. Powershell in a Month of Lunches is well-regarded, and if you know Python already, you can probably skip the first several chapters.

If you already know a CM tool (e.g. Puppet/Ansible/Chef/Salt), check into the Windows/DSC support in said tool.

AD = Dynamic DNS + LDAP + Kerberos. ADSI Edit will be your friend.

Start learning the basics of GPO - it's sort of the desktop/back-office server equivalent of a CM tool. Most often hooked into an AD group/OU.

Learn to live with love Event Viewer. Simple text-based logs are a rarity in Windows world (with the possible exception of IIS).

Don't sweat it too much. Learning the basics of Windows should be pretty quick for a Linux admin.

Hi! Glad you found the subreddit and are going to be playing the game for the first time! This is very exciting.

Assuming you're playing Cyberpunk 2020 (which is the most popular edition of Cyberpunk), I've found this site to give a good overview of tips and how the system works. Here's a link to the character sheet.

Unfortunately, as far as I'm aware, there are no legal copies of a digital version of the rules anywhere. Digital and physical copies of the rules can be bought on DriveThru RPG. You can still buy hard copies on the official website, and they're actually cheaper in either location than getting them on Amazon. However, assuming everyone else in your group is at least a little unfamiliar with the rules, it'll probably work out even if there's only one copy to share.

If you've got any questions at all, and you probably do have a few since the resources I gave you don't really cover everything, the handful of us that hang around this subreddit can probably answer your Qs.

Edit: added info about DriveThru RPG copies. Neato! This is why I rely on all y'all to actually tell people how to play this game.

First, read our Wiki. It is very thorough and answers a lot of these common questions such as

day to day? The Practice of System and Network Administration
And the topical reference books listed below.

Books to help in shaping a sysadmin? The above &:
The Phoenix Project
Time Management for System Administrators


Topical Books I see mentioned often and have been very helpful to me:
Powershell in a month of lunches
Learn Python the hard way
Unix and Linux System Administration Handbook
Windows Server 2016: Inside Out

Group Policy
AbsoluteBSD
FreeBSD mastery:ZFS
CCNA
RHCSA/RHCE
Pro Puppet
SSH Mastery

On my docket:
FreeBSD Mastery: Advanced ZFS

Michael W. Lucas and Thomas Limoncelli are very good sysadmin writers, you can't go wrong with a topic they have chosen to write about.

Most of the *nix stuff assumes a baseline knowledge of how to use a unix-based system. I learned as I went but did pick up an old copy of Unix Visual Quickstart Guide not too long ago at a used books sale, which seems like a good starting place for someone overwhelmed with sitting at a terminal and being productive.
I notice I don't have any Virtualization books, perhaps someone else can fill in good books. Most of my knowledge regarding virtualization and network storage has been a mix of official docs, video training, and poking at it. Seems innate but it isn't.

You're probably going to absolutely hate my advice, but I recommend you read these two books:

Windows Internals, Part 1 and Windows Internals, Part 2

They're very long books, and they can be very dry if you're not interested in them. But if you want one surefire way to learn driver development, it's to learn how the inner mechanisms work. When I first started trying to teach myself Linux driver development (which I feel is actually even easier than Windows), I noticed most of the tutorials I did pretty much went in one ear and out the other. I could write the drivers up and get them working with the tutorial, but I just didn't know what to do next. You'll probably retain maybe less than 25% of the material when you read both those books (probably around 1,300 pages). However, what you will retain is the breadth of knowledge.

When you start working with WDF, you probably won't know nearly anything required to develop your first real driver. What you will know after reading those books though is how to learn. Once you have the breadth to figure out what you don't know/remember, you can easily look it up and figure it out for yourself. If you don't know what you don't know, it's unlikely anyone (including online resources) will be able to help you.

If you're fairly new, I think you should start something like Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches. You'll find this recommendation everywhere and for good reason. I personally was an peer reviewer of the 3rd edition and read it page-for-page slowly and provided a lot of feedback. It's a good book to get started with.

After that then move into the advanced tool making books like Learn PowerShell Toolmaking in a Month of Lunches.

Of course this just help get you started. You'll need to get a lot of practice with realistic projects to become familiar with how to build tools. I would highly recommend becoming very familiar with Git. There are a TON of tutorials out there (both web pages and YouTube videos).

Honestly to become a good toolmaker you'll need a lot of practice, but in terms of material these are a good source to get you started. Be patient and try to find small projects that you can grab onto. I would also recommend Windows PowerShell in Action for a more under-the-hood kind of view of how things work.

You will pick up the knowledge fairly quickly, but the wisdom part comes slowly.

Read some books:

• Phoenix Project https://www.amazon.com/Phoenix-Project-DevOps-Helping-Business-ebook/dp/B00AZRBLHO/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495835961&sr=1-1&keywords=the+phoenix+project
  
• Practice of System and Network Administration https://www.amazon.com/Practice-System-Network-Administration-Enterprise/dp/0321919165/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
  
• Toyota Kata https://www.amazon.com/Toyota-Kata-Managing-Improvement-Adaptiveness/dp/0071635238/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495835986&sr=1-1&keywords=Toyota+kata
  
• GTD https://www.amazon.com/Getting-Things-Done-Stress-Free-Productivity/dp/0142000280
  
• Five Dysfunctions of a Team https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495836025&sr=1-1&keywords=five+dysfunctions+of+a+team
  
• How to win friends and influence people https://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671027034
  
• Powershell in a month of lunches https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1495836112&sr=1-1&keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches
  
  Start humble, stay humble, be quick to listen and slow to speak, and don't make changes on Friday!

I took and passed the sec+ yesterday.

Resources I used were CBTNuggets as the primary study guide-these are the best-he goes through each of the objectives point by point. And you can speed up the videos if you don't have a lot of time.

Also squeezed in some professor messer, those free youtube videos. Sometimes he expands a particular objective point you're lacking on.
And then used this book from amazon, but I'm sure any would do-I just liked to have a physical copy of something to flip through.

I didn't find it too difficult-I definitely had to focus and think, but I was confident at the end that I had passed.

I'm a fan of this guy for computer/network fundamentals, as well as some good security-focused tutorials. I would also recommend Network Warrior as a fantastic read for a beginner.

I'm of the opinion that you should start with learning network fundamentals and then move on to security, because many security principles rely on a solid networking/general IT foundation.

Everyone has their own way. I would say start off small and organized, start with something easy and branch off into the more harder stuff. As for me I and how I did it (and I'm still learning btw, it's a never ending process) is to pick up a couple books about "hacking" or penetration testing. I highly recommend this book to start: https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Hacking-Penetration-Testing-Second/dp/0124116442/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1483325710&sr=8-2&keywords=basic+to+penetration+testing, it covers the concept of hacking and breaks it down into steps so that a beginner could understand. After I got the concepts, I started to learn Linux (it's kinda a rule of thumb for hackers to know how to use Linux) I learned how the operating system works, the history of it, how to use the terminal, etc. I even completely stop using windows and using entirely Linux for several months.

After that I started to pick up programming languages and I'm still learning them to this day. I would recommend starting out with a scripting language like python and branch out, you don't need to learn it to a point where you become a software engineer, I mean it's a big plus but you don't need to go that hard. Enough where you get familiar with the syntax and know how to create simple programs.

After that I started to use Kali Linux and learned to use the tools and I started to do CTF challenges which I think is the best way to learn is hands on learning and CTFs do just that

good sites:
https://www.hacksplaining.com/
https://www.cybrary.it/
https://www.vulnhub.com/
https://www.hak5.org/
www.securitytube.net/

It's cliche, but Month of Lunches is great if you're looking for a book. Honestly my advice is to solve problems with powershell. Learn to lean heavily on "Get-Command" and "Get-Help". When someone comes to you with something you would normally use the gui for, just figure out how to powershell it (advice - avoid device drivers)


A key piece of Systems Administration is driving yourself. In many situations you are the bottleneck to other people accomplishing their project or to fixing an issue - this means you need to understand that everyone is going to tell you their thing is high priority because they can't do anything til you're done. As you grow, you'll figure out how to get out of that position (automating pieces is a major part of that) but right now, focus on communicating clearly and honestly. Learn to set expectations - that's more important then any technical skill you can focus on.

> As the title states, you focus on the Strategy, not the implementation.

From your description it seems that you're working at a more tactical level and not a strategic level. For me, a strategist should be working with the client across their entire brand and not hyper focused on individual projects.

> The difference with UX Designers is that I don't design anything

But in the sentence prior you state:


propose a solution considering all the variables.

Design isn't using a specific tool, like photoshop. Design is a process that has deliverables like blueprints, specifications, roadmaps, parameters, blah blah blah.

> Most of the time my deliverables are low fidelity wireframes and presentations with my findings and recommendations.

So, this is design.

> I like this role because I'm a Computer Systems Bachelor, not a graphic designer

What the fuck? How much of a firm understanding do you have in the field of Interaction Design, Human Practices, and Situated Action?

You should read some of the classical books in your industry because I think you've read too many poorly informed blogs.

Plans and Situated Actions by Lucy Suchman. Lucy is pretty much the Grand Mother of modern User Experience. She changed the entire industry from being Engineering focus to User Research oriented.

About Face 3: The Essentials of Interaction Design.

AND

The Inmates are Running the Asylum

Alan Cooper is a Software Developer. He basically created Visual Basic (which in the day was a significant starting point in bringing programming to the masses (not to mention that the UI builder probably defined modern .NET to incredible levels)). Alan transitioned to Interaction Design and User Experience in the early 90s. He has great insight on what Interaction Design and User Experience Design actually is.

> The downside is that, for small teams and startups, my role is too specific.

It has nothing to do with the size of the team. It has everything to do with the type, and size, of your clients. If your agency only gets small application specific jobs then you probably don't need a strategist. However, if your agency gets clients that want support across their entire brand then you probably do.

I've been struggling with the same thing in my environment, so I'm not sure I can answer this question for you. That being said, I've been doing a fair bit of reading on best practices for this issue and from what I can tell the general consensus is "what works best for your environment".

I've been organizing users and computers into their own OUs by department. That may not work best for your environment though. You may need to do by physical location, both in the office, and nationally/internationally.

I've been architecting mine to best be able to use GPOs and GPPs. Again, you'll want to think about your final setup here. Are you going to have printers mapped by location? Are you having specific printers for specific users or groups? Do your users move between floors? Between sites?

These are questions I've been learning to ask when thinking about AD design. I've been reading The Practice of System and Network Administration and I can't recommend it enough. Another book I've been reading is Group Policy: Fundamentals, Security, and the Managed Desktop. The Group Policy book is a great resource and poses different scenarios out to help with organizing AD which I found particularly helpful.

As for those "migrated" users, you'll likely want to put them in the proper OUs, it sounds like there was a merge or something similar in this environment. It may be best to just start over and rebuild the domain, but that's a big if.

I as well went to school for Network Engineering and am working Entry-Level networking now. These are the books that have helped me so far.

Network Warrior

Network+

CCNA Library

TCP/IP Illustrated

I've read a few others, but these were my favorite ones. The Network+ book helped me obtain my Network+ Cert, then the CCNA Library helped me obtain my CCENT and CCNA. Great Books!

I would only recommend that Netowork+ book though if you plan on getting into Cisco stuff because the author is a Cisco guy and tends to start rambling about Cisco technologies that you will learn for the CCNA.

Hi! I'd just like to recommend this site www.professormesser.com it has a great series of videos for Network+. I take it you'll probably go on to do the CCNA afterwards? I'm not really aware of any online courses but going the self study route is very doable. For the CCNA I'd recommend Todd Lammle's book. And here's a series of CCNA video tutorials.

Also get your hands on Packet Tracer, as /u/Immuchtooawesome suggested, it's a great little network simulator that you can use for practicing the basics.

As for getting your foot in the door, I'm in the same position so I won't presume to offer any advice there!

Network Warrior is a great guide. Packet pushers has a wealth of knowledge (be sure to check out the other feeds they have, e.g., Healthy Paranoia) in their archives covering all sorts of networking things. TWIET is solid and much more sysadmin focused.

Powershell is a favorite at my place of work and allows us to automate some pretty fun stuff.. if you get started scripting or have any questions feel free to P.M. me anytime.. as for resources for powershell:

https://leanpub.com/powershell-scripting-toolmaking - PDF

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160 - Book

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CRTahGYnws&list=PL6D474E721138865A - Video

Hope this helps.. :)

As an IT guy myself, look into industry certs. My field is mostly server-related sysadmin stuff, so I'm not sure it works in your field though.

For example, for my field, you could just order a book like this for $40, and when you've read it, done examples/excercises on VMs to the point where you're confident enough, just go take the exam for $150.

After that $200, you can be a Microsoft Certified Professional.

In terms of knowledge, these certs aren't walks-in-the-park, that's why they're valuable on a CV, but if they're in a field that you're already knowledgeable about, then just getting that already-present knowledge certified shouldn't be too difficult.

And they are great for CVs, because that one line on the CV mentioning the cert, it summarizes an approximate amount of skills and knowledge that you have, and suggest a minimum amount of intelligence and trainability. In that sense, it's similar to a degree.

> Is there any prior knowledge needed and if so what?

No prior knowledge needed. Of course, if you have experience with other scripting languages and some core concepts (if statements, variables, etc), it certainly helps.

> Just wondering if there is a best practice for newbies of powershell?

Try to think of something you want to do. It could be as simple as creating folders that have a unique name (like based off the date created), but the more you practice even mundane tasks in Powershell, the more you are going to learn about how it works and how to make it do what you want.

> If anyone could recommend some resources to help me get started that would be greatly appreciated.

There is no shame in going onto Google and searching for Powershell scripts that others have made. If you do take this approach, I would recommend trying to break down and analyze what the script is doing with each command and line. Also, this book really helped me get my foot in the door (well worth the ~$36):

• https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=asc_df_1617294160/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2151054104313612023&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052229&hvtargid=pla-406163967273&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62820903995&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=2151054104313612023&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9052229&hvtargid=pla-406163967273
  
  The book makes no assumption on where your skill level is at and starts explaining concepts from the entry level. (what is Powershell, how the commands are structured, how to make a variable, etc.)

I don't know really. I have the CCNA and CCNA Security, but I also work with Cisco products and deal with security on a daily basis so my study-time will be skewed. I would say I spent an average of 3-4 hours a day reviewing material for a month before I took it. I would flip-through the exam cram book on my lunch break and spend some time at home in my own lab playing around. This book is pretty good. If you've never touched IOS, maybe jump on ebay and look at a used switch and router...

Everything he said.

And:

Get a subscription to Safari Books Online if you can. It has helped me so many times when I don't know a given subject in detail.

Read: Network Warrior, great overview on lots of things. http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861

Don't be afraid to say "I don't know, let me research that for you." You have to build a trust relationship so people know they can rely on you for good answers, not guesses or other half assed stuff.

Find trustworthy sources you can ask questions regarding concepts, deployments, and technical issues.

I'd start at the Secret Shop and build a Perseverance.

Joking aside, if you already have an understanding of the basics, then Network Warrior By Gary Donahue is a great place to start. It's a little dated in some parts, but it'll help you not only get back on track with fundamental knowledge, but also help you with all of the practical details that you need to do networking in the real world. It's sort of Cisco focused, but has plenty of general content that'll help you out on any network.

I agree with /u/brother_bean except I don't know if you can keep that pace up, it will probably take you longer due to the lack of experience.

Using Powershell is definitely the best way to learn it and I wouldn't be too stressed about it, following along with the videos from CBTNuggets or Pluralsight will give you what you need. If you feel like you need more there is a book a lot of people recommend.

My career advice is to not focus so much on passing the exam, the skills you learn along the way will end up being way more valuable. If you're seeking a job as a junior SysAdmin somewhere the certificate will get your foot in the door but speaking intelligently on the subject matter is what gets you the job. Make sure you're actually learning the material instead of memorizing to pass the test.

batch coding is a good start, but ultimately limited. If you ever start messing with VMware, there are a ton of really awesome tools and utilities coded in Powershell that are far more efficient than any other solution out there.

Also check out a book called Learn Windows Powershell in a Month of Lunches. http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290211

Also look into Python.

I would also like to take the time to plug a few resources, if I may, that have greatly assisted me throughout my career.

1. Of course, Cisco Press. Wendell Odom especially.
   
2. Non-Cisco Press, Todd Lamlle's CCNA book is great!
   
3. CBT Nuggets!! Jeremy Cioara and Keith Barker.
   
4. Tech Exams Forums!! For answers to your questions regarding certification, study material, etc, from a variety of vendor certs. Or, to just read motivating success stories!!
   
5. Internetworking Experts (INE!) That link should direct you to their free CCNA video course. If that doesn't work for you, simply register an account with them and search for the CCNA video course.
   
6. Thomas Limoncelli's The Practice of Systems and Network Administration
   
7. Gary A Donahue's Network Warrior
   
8. Jeff Doyle's CCIE Professional Development Routing TCP/IP Vol. 1 or 2
   
9. Douglas E. Comer's Internetworking with TCP/IP
   
10. GNS3!! Free Cisco Router and ASA Emulation!! Just make sure you have access to Cisco IOS software!
    
11. Andrew S. Tanenbaum's Computer Networks.
    
12. Jeremy Stretch and PacketLife!! Also, Jeremy's network Cheat Sheets!
    
13. Firewall.cx!!
    
14. Cisco's Command Lookup Tool! Requires login, but nonetheless, a great resource for your Cisco engineers when you just NEED to know how the hell a particular command works.
    
15. Priscilla Oppenheimer's Top-Down Network Design
    
16. I've heard the folks at /r/networking are pretty legit.

Here is your best bet:

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Inside-Current-Service/dp/1509302484/ref=mp_s_a_1_8?keywords=server+2016&qid=1565742949&s=gateway&sr=8-8

Also if you want to become good server admin learn Powershell early and learn it well. Build many core servers and learn to set them up only using command line and power shell.

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?keywords=powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches&qid=1565743055&s=gateway&sprefix=powershell+in+&sr=8-1

Congrats on the new gig

I use Packet Tracer for some labs, GNS3 for others. I recommend playing with both!

The website Router Alley has some excellent guides and has a more concise writing style than Odom, who tends to contain more depth at the expense of added fluff. However, it's not a one stop shop.

All throughout my studies, Google has revealed some great networking blogs (most notably packetlife) which anchors some topics that prove to be most confusing while also exposing you to topics just beyond the scope of CCNA to prepare you for the road ahead.

Network Warrior and TCP/IP Guide are excellent supplementary texts, the former containing some slightly dated information with real-world scenarios, the latter describing the full range of TCP/IP protocols and relevant RFCs.

Godspeed, may the Flow be with you.

/r/powershell is a nice place to begin and there are a number of links on the sidebar that can help get you started. When I was getting started I used the book Windows PowerShell Unleashed which I really liked. I have heard good things about Learn Windows PowerShell In A Month Of Lunches but I haven't had the chance to look in to it myself.

For free online resources I like ss64 and I also referenced computerperformance.co.uk when getting started.

Agreed. OP, you nee to take some time and learn powershell - you can certainly do all the tasks that you listed in your post, but again, you need to learn the basics. I suggest starting with this book. Best of luck.

I'm 22 years old. See my response to hidperf regarding what I plan on doing about getting into the field. As far as studying, I'm going to take a short break from going after certifications. I'd like to go for CCNP next, but I keep hearing that it's not good to have a CCNP with no experience. For now, I think I'm going to pick up this book and read it. It's supposed to be a lot more focused on practicality and problems you encounter on a day-to-day basis on the job. I've heard a lot of good things about it.

Edit: Actually, just ordered the book. Yay for Amazon Prime :)

Sorry for getting back so late, I've been out of the office and busy with audit stuff. Here's a link to the green MS book. https://www.amazon.com/70-410-Installing-Configuring-Windows-Server/dp/0735684243 Admittedly, I haven't taken that test or studied for it so I can't comment on that book specifically.

70-410 is a Server 2012 test and mainstream support has ended for that OS, but extended support is still planned through October 2023. I'm not sure if you're able, but I would consider a cert in Server 2016. Much of it is the same as 2012 but you'll be ahead of the curve with 2016. Although that might change your certification path too. Good luck either way

The key idea is really just to have enough knowledge about the system so that you can follow what is likely wrong in a logical manner.

In this case this means having a good understanding of operating system internals, processor architecture and knowing some x86 assembly/C/C++.

Some good resources:

• Windows Internals A set of two books dedicated to how Windows works, although this set of books is only for Windows 7 it is still the best resource for operating system internals. The second book contains a chapter demonstrating basic troubleshooting using Windbg (The Windows Kernel and User-Mode debugger).
  
  
• Intel Software Development Manuals Most Windows systems run on x86 architecture processors so having a decent understanding on how they work is quite useful. At over 4600 pages this manual is more useful as a reference, but still something I use quite often.
  
  
• The NT-debugging blog Excellent blog written by Microsoft escalation engineers which are experts at debugging Windows problems.
  
  
• Defrag Tools A series of web-videos made by Microsoft demonstrating troubleshooting using various tools.
  

Celery’s use of RabbitMQ for communication with workers is just an implementation detail. It works great for distributing functions but it’s not great for data pipelines.

I built a messaging system with a lightweight abstraction over pika. At the time I couldn’t find a library or framework that did what I wanted. If the complexity is too much then I would question your choice of messaging queuing entirely.

I found this book to be a great source of inspiration with my project: https://www.amazon.com/Enterprise-Integration-Patterns-Designing-Deploying/dp/0321200683

I went right for the CCNA. Took me two tries - missed by four points the first time, which really sucked, but them's the breaks.

Hands-on experience is absolutely vital, because the Cisco exams require you to know both theory and application. If you can get your hands on Packet Tracer, GNS3, or any reasonably recent equipment, I would strongly advise playing with that. Since your time on the test is limited, you can't be thinking about command syntax. It pretty much has to be automatic.

I had a bit of previous experience prior to actually taking the test, but I found Todd Lammle's book quite helpful.

Honestly, I started with the Powershell Cookbook but it took me forever to get anything done. I never really fully got the hang of it until I started working through Project Euler that I started to really understand what was occurring, and how to accomplish my goals.

Additionally, there is a great resource for transitioning from bash to PS, but it is a video.

Some literary resources you should find helpful. When in doubt, track down the best in your field and find out what they are writing/doing (Good Luck!)

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_c--CzbBZM4SFB

https://www.manning.com/books/learn-windows-powershell-in-a-month-of-lunches-third-edition

Virtual Labs
Building Virtual Machine Labs: A Hands-On Guide https://www.amazon.com/dp/1546932631/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_4b.Czb24JYXTM

Microsoft Books:
(I am positive you can scrape some useful AD information from this collection)
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/mssmallbiz/2017/07/11/largest-free-microsoft-ebook-giveaway-im-giving-away-millions-of-free-microsoft-ebooks-again-including-windows-10-office-365-office-2016-power-bi-azure-windows-8-1-office-2013-sharepo/

If you are going to pursue the single CCNA test, you should definitely get Tod Lammle's CCNA Study guide. He writes some of the best books for self study.

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Certified-Network-Associate-640-802/dp/0470901071/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_1

If you are going to pursue the 2 test route for CCNA, here are the books to get.

ICND 1

http://www.amazon.com/CCENT-Certified-Networking-Technician-640-822/dp/0470247029/ref=pd_sim_b4

ICND 2

http://www.amazon.com/ICND2-Official-Certification-640-816-640-802/dp/158720181X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_text_c

If you can, sign up for the Cisco Net Academy, it's a great course.

• The Rootkit Arsenal: Escape and Evasion in the Dark Corners of the System, 2nd Edition (2012)
  
  This book covers rootkit development, not analysis, on Windows 7 and x86/IA32. It's a must read, if you're interested in rootkits.
  
  
• Rootkits and Bootkits: Reversing Modern Malware and Next Generation Threats (Release date set to january 2019)
  
  While not yet released, it looks very promising. Over the years, Microsoft has continually introduced better protections against rootkits and malware in Windows. Among other things, the book will cover how some of the rootkits/bootkits seen in the wild have bypassed protections such as Secure Boot, kernel-mode signing, Patch Guard and Device Guard.
  
  I'd also recommend having a look at the following books:
  
  
• Practical Malware Analysis: The Hands-On Guide to Dissecting Malicious Software (2012)
  
  
• Practical Reverse Engineering: x86, x64, ARM, Windows Kernel, Reversing Tools, and Obfuscation 1st Edition (2014)
  
  
• The Art of Memory Forensics: Detecting Malware and Threats in Windows, Linux, and Mac Memory 1st Edition (2014)
  
  
  Also, Windows Internals for both Windows 7 and Windows 10 is a great reference to have laying around.

Public school is free and community college is nearly free (assuming you qualify for federal aid, and you probably do). If you didn't take advantage of your free high school education, you made a very poor choice and you're certainly going to have a harder time. But those are consequences of your own choices.

If you moved out of your parents' home as soon as possible just because you wanted to be "free and independent" and now you can't afford school because you have bills to pay, those are consequences of your own choices.

Also, believe it or not, you can learn things by yourself. I taught myself computer networking with this book and some Googling. I went and got a Cisco Certification, and now I have a career earning $10K above the average for my area. It took maybe 6 months for me to do this and I had no outside help or cost beyond the book and the cost of the exam ($300).

If I needed another career I would take my state's electrician exam (after studying, of course). They generally make good money and are always in demand. Or I would learn to repair Ducati motorcycles. They're a very expensive, very popular brand of motorcycle in my area and few people know how to fix them. The dealers charge $150 an hour for labor and half of that goes to the tech. So if you spent a few months learning the engine you could be making $70 an hour.

Obviously I'm of a technical mindset and my choices reflect that, but you get the idea.


This why all those people make the "bootstraps" argument. I know it's often bullshit, but the idea is that many people - not ALL, but many - just aren't being resourceful or trying very hard. They drop out of high-school or college because it was too hard or too expensive and then just give up and claim that they need help. There are lots and lots of things you can do once you realize that going to Harvard isn't going to pan out.

If we're going to help the impoverished, I think the solution is not just paying them more. It's making education available to them so that they can learn a valuable skill or trade. I'm all for training programs and the like. But doubling the pay of fry-cooks just because is not going to fix anything. We have to figure out why, in your 30 years of life, you never learned anything other than how to cook fries, and then we have to fix that.

1. Powershell can interact directly with AD. Typically you create a query against your active directory, and do something to the results. Say...you decide you want to fill in a field in AD that hasn't been filled before, and you need to do it a thousand times.
   
2. Granular backup in sharepoint- crucial sites are backed up nightly as individual units, meaning I can quickly recover a single site without having to recover ALL the sites.
   
   You'll have to grab a book on the topic- one of the big hurdles most people face is just figuring out the sort of questions you've asked at the end here: how do I execute a script? how do I write portable code? where can I execute this script?
   The answer to all of these depend greatly on the script. A generic script can be executed from any machine with powershell installed and an execution policy of "remotesigned" or better.
   Here's the book I like:
   http://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/0596801505/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1314721194&sr=8-1
   And here's a tool that will help you get started:
   http://powergui.org/downloads.jspa
   
   You're more than welcome to PM me any questions- I'm no expert, but having recently learned a lot of this, I can relate to not understanding it, and the questions you'll have are fresh on my mind.

PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is kind of the defacto starter book.

From there, I would recommend diving into The PowerShell Scripting and Toolmaking Book.

Naturally, this sub is also an excellent resource. You could also join the PowerShell Slack, where tons of good discussions/examples can be found.

Download boot2root VM's from vulnhub.com and try to pwn them. It's slightly dated now, but when I started learning a couple of years ago, https://www.amazon.com/Basics-Hacking-Penetration-Testing-Second/dp/0124116442/ref=redir_mobile_desktop?ie=UTF8&ref_=dp_ob_neva_mobile was extremely helpful for learning Kali and the tools, as well as the penetration testing process.

Check out the OWASP webgoat project and DVWA to practice hacking web applications--a large amount of pentest work these days is webapps vs the traditional network pentest. Read the Web Application Hacker's Handbook and practice a LOT.

Lastly, find infosec meetups and other communities in your area and go network. The easiest way to get into a field is to find professionals working in the area and buy them beers.

I second freeRTOS. Pick up an Atmel dev board. They have good support for freeRTOS. Big concepts here will be stack management, mutex/semaphores for thread safe operations, using message queues to communicate between threads, blocking/non blocking operations, and find a profiler so you can visualize your efficiency.

For driver development I will point you towards Linux. Try writing a basic storage or GPIO driver on a raspberry pi. I have linked a book below that will help with understanding Linux drivers. The big thing is you will have to use ioctl calls to communicate with your driver.
Link to book!

Nope.

I'm talking about this one.

There are some slight errors in the questions, but they're pretty negligible (if you know what you're doing, you'll notice them and question the answers they give you). Also, another great resource is the CNNA command book (from Cisco press), especially if you have access to routers/switches.

They are just now starting to come out. I would recommend these two books "Network Warrior" (this covers real-world applications not covered by the soon former CCNA R&S exam). It is a bit dated but a good read. The other is "Network Programmability and Automation". These should help tide you over until the books come out. Both are on amazon.com


https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-Need-Wasnt/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_3?crid=25XVKEVRZ1LXQ&keywords=network+warrior+3rd+edition&qid=1573413049&s=books&sprefix=network+warrior+%2Cstripbooks%2C232&sr=1-3


https://www.amazon.com/Network-Programmability-Automation-Next-Generation-Engineer/dp/1491931256/ref=sr_1_3?crid=5F6P0KHY1366&keywords=network+programmability+and+automation&qid=1573413098&s=books&sprefix=network+program%2Cstripbooks%2C207&sr=1-3

I read the first few chapters to see if I wanted to read the whole book and I liked the approach so its on my list to read. Haven't dug into it yet I also got [Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches] (http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325095521&sr=8-1) but haven't tried it yet since I enjoy my lunches lol

The world of networking is huge. It's a marathon not a sprint. Huge repositories of information exist. Take your time to go through them.

Start with these -

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-Illustrated-Vol-Addison-Wesley-Professional/dp/0201633469

https://www.amazon.com/TCP-IP-Illustrated-Implementation-Vol/dp/020163354X

Use this to help supplement your studies -

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-Donahue/dp/1449387861/

As always Cisco has a ton of white papers -

http://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en_us/about/security/intelligence/urpf.pdf

Free Presentations from Cisco Live -

https://www.ciscolive.com/online/connect/search.ww



If you wish to look at things from a different vendors perspective look into Juniper Day One -

http://www.juniper.net/us/en/training/jnbooks/day-one/

Finally RFCs are good place to get the nitty gritty of the protocols/standards -


OSPF

I know this book is fairly often recommended by r/networking. It's one thing to know what an IP address is. It's another to understand what an IP address is. Honestly what helps me learn is practice and experience. Sure I can read and learn about access lists and Vlan's all I want, but until I first started working with them, I really didn't understand what they were for.

My suggestion, get that book, or any other that you think might help you understand the basics. Learn the OSI model. Then practice, practice, practice. Download Cisco Packet Tracer or GNS3. Watch tutorials on them. Then start setting up and playing with your test network. Finally, start working towards CCNA topics.

All my personal opinion of course.

pay attention to what edition they are, as an example, Lammle's CCNA book is up to the 7th edition, but you can still find and buy the 6th edition on amazon.

it take a few minutes to find the right ones, but you can sort them out if you play "spot the difference"

this is the one i have and am working through, definitely recommended:
Llamle - 7th edition

The best PS book I've come across is Learn PowerShell in a Month of Lunches: https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1535785632&sr=8-1&keywords=powershell+month+of+lunches

​

Also, keep an eye out for the authors in blog posts as you're Googling. Don Jones and Jeff Hicks are both really active on Powershell.org as well as Pluralsight.com.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1118289420/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1482264076&sr=8-2&pi=SY200_QL40&keywords=windows+server+2012+r2&dpPl=1&dpID=51na%2B3vL4cL&ref=plSrch

Get that, Microsoft's available virtual labs, and setup a virtual environment to lab changes in. Experience will end up being a great teacher.

Figure out what you want to standardize your documentation platform on, and implement that. Writing clear documentation will go a long way. There are Wordpress templates available, or cloud hosted documentation platforms. Just be aware you'll want something that can scale right from the start and is easy for everyone to use ( which means not Excel, Word, or OneNote).

The CCNA book by Todd Lammle is AMAZING.
Read it. every. day.
Also Youtube. You can find vids on literally everything and its FREE.

In modern computing & when dealing with a domain, you're rarely going to touch the Registry much less consider fucking with it exception for very rare circumstances or if you're a very very very very big organization.

There are some books this book is usually the standard recommended that I've seen. Otherwise, you're using sites like these from the source. (I wish that site wasn't so hard to find.

I also recommend, judging by the comments, reading this may be helpful: https://darksim905.com/blog/index.php/2017/02/17/rsysadmin-frequently-asked-questions-an-ongoing-series/

Grab Don Jones' PowerShell in a Month of Lunches, it's well worth it, and an easy way to become proficient. That said, Ed Wilson's Hey Scripting Guy blog is also a fantastic resource.

Your definition of 'heavily using' a core may not agree with Microsoft's. As I mentioned, x86-Land has long used time-sharing on a single core to get multiple threads processed "at the same time". My understanding of newer Windows (the ones SMP-aware) is that the kernel has an 'affinity' for using the same core or two for as much work as possible. I don't dispute your assertion that an under-utilized core will pick up a new thread over a 'busier' one but I think if you were to put the ole microscope to what's going on you'll find that Core 0 may be operating 75% of the threads (as they are mostly kernel processes); Core 1 may be running 20% and the other 2 running what's left.

I used to work as a Microsoft Partner so a lot of my info comes from TechNet but also from well-respected sources such as AnandTech.com and Tomshardware.com. The deep down kernel type stuff comes from Mark Russinovich who founded Sysinternals (and the series of tools that bear that name) and has written a few books about how Windows works. He's one of the few people that know more about Windows than the people who actually wrote it.

I agree with your original point but throwing up a comment like that here is just asking for the fanbois on both sides to start foaming at the mouth.

First, you should have gotten a printout with bar graphs indicating which areas you were weak/strong in. Compare that to the exam objectives here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-697.aspx to decide which areas to focus.

​

If you haven't already, sign up for a free Azure trial and play around with InTune. Hands-on experience with it will go a long way on the test. Know how InTune can be used to manage Mobile devices, compliance vs configuration items, App Deployment methods, etc.

​

If you have a PC that can handle it, the Microsoft 365 Powered Lab Kit will set up a number of VMs on your machine for practice. It includes guided labs that will prep you for the exam (and your MCSE: Mobility). It can be found here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-microsoft-365-powered-device-lab-kit

​

Learn the basics of PowerShell if you haven't already. You don't need to know how to script, but a basic understanding of cmdlet syntax and some basic cmdlets will get you by. PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=dp_ob_title_bk) is highly recommended by others here, and I recommend the (free!) MVA videos on PowerShell with Jason Helmick and Jeffery Snover (the first one is here: https://mva.microsoft.com/en-US/training-courses/getting-started-with-microsoft-powershell-8276)

​

For books, I used Panek's guide (https://www.amazon.com/MCSA-Microsoft-Windows-Study-Guide/dp/111925230X/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1538429066&sr=8-5&keywords=70-697+configuring+windows+devices). It is out of date now for InTune, but the rest of it should still be relevant.

​

Last, remember that you don't need to go deep into any of the tech covered - the test is hard because it is broad.

​

If you have specific areas you want materials for, let me know, and I'll post what I can find.

​

I used this book. It has short, concise lessons and gives a good overview of things. There's also a followup book about scripting.

I'm sure a free powershell tutorial online would be fine to start with also.

A bit different, but I am reading Network Warrior.

I also just finished listening to An Astronauts Guide to life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. Really really good. I have now started listing to David Michell: Backstory and it is hilarious.

> Wow, that's really great. Where do you even start to learn to program this kind of thing? Like accessing hardware

This: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596005903/ should cover most of it.

I really liked this book: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1118289420/

It covers a lot of the 410-412 stuff in really good detail and was an easy read.

The OS is just a program like any other program. In order to really start understanding how it works, you should learn C.

Once you've got some C down, read Advanced Linux Programming

From there read Robert Loves Linux Kernel Development - even if you're not a kernel developer, it'll give you tremendous insight into how the kernel works.

Also check out Linux Device Drivers. I found this & Loves book complemented each other nicely.

not a problem. Google and ms technet are your friends.

I have heard great things about

beginner level:
http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323979474&sr=8-1


more of an intermediate/advanced:
http://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/0596801505/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323979485&sr=8-1

This guy is a pretty good resource. Check out "Section 4: networking" under his A+ study videos. He also has a Network+ series. If you decide you really want to get in depth you might check out a CCNA study guide like this one. CCNA goes more into enterprise level stuff than you will need (and it's obviously cisco-centric), but you will still learn a lot of good networking theory.

I recently took (and failed) 70-417, the upgrade exam which combines 70-410, 70-411, and 70-412. I studied all three courses as prep for 70-417 as although it only covers a subset of each course you can be examined on any area.

By far the best book I've come across for 2012 is Mastering Windows Server 2012 R2 by Minasi et al. It's not geared specifically towards the exams, you'll need to pick out the objectives. It's eminently readable but at 1670 pages will take a while to get through.

Assuming the Exam Ref books for the individual courses are similar to the 70-417 Exam Ref book, as an overview of the objectives they'll be fine but they don't go deep enough.

If you're after videos, I wasn't that impressed with 70-410 or 70-411 content on PluralSight but there are now two 70-412 courses: a retired course by Mike Hammond and a new course updated for the R2 content by Greg Shields and I thought both were excellent.

I was like you no programming experience at all. I learned from these videos, I suggest you download them as MS is decommissioning this site soon.

1. Getting Started with Microsoft PowerShell
   
2. Using PowerShell for Active Directory
   
   and everyone will recommend reading Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches although I'm not a big reader and have not gone through most of this book. The two video modules will give you a good start. This reddit has also helped ALOT.

READ

Network+ Cert Guide

Cisco CCNA

Network Warrior

Packet Life


WATCH

How to use/install GNS3

CBTNuggets (Paid Training)

DO

GNS3

Packet Tracer + Labs (torrent)

Cisco CCNA Study Group

9tut.com Labs

Talk to an IT Recruiter

TekSystems

Tech Team

Robert Half


These are just a few examples, many more exist. Good luck!

I was in the same boat as you when I first started learning PowerShell. I had experience in C++, C and Java. I bought The Windows PowerShell Cookbook to use as a reference and just started to wing it. It helped that I'm a sysadmin at a large company and I'm pretty much left to my own devices as long as I get my tickets and projects done. Each time I'd want to do something in PowerShell, I'd just plunk away at it. I'd use Get-Help, the reference book, and Google to help me along. A lot of it was just thinking about how I'd do something in another language, then figuring out the equivalents in PS.

When I first started, I would write structured scripts, but now I pretty much do everything on the command line.

+1 on those books. Also:

• Building Microservices -> a fast introduction to Microservices, talks a lot about how to split concerns - touching a lot of DDD concepts - on a big app
  
• Enterprise Integration Patterns -> not all of it, but if you move to an event-based app it helps a lot
  
• Domain-Driven Design in PHP -> still only half the book in Leanpub, but really promising
  

I'm not too sure if this is the sort of answer you're looking for because it appears that you are pretty new to all this but...

If you read these books, then you will know everything you need (ranked by reward to required effort ratio):

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Malware-Analysis-Hands-Dissecting/dp/1593272901

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Reverse-Engineering-Reversing-Obfuscation/dp/1118787315

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Internals-Part-architecture-management/dp/0735684189

However, the books might be pretty difficult to understand with how much you currently know.

TDD + Dependency Injection. Mastering those two concepts was critical in my career, and got me over the imposter syndrome in Senior Software Engineer position. I highly recommend the following book, it will completely change how you write modular code: https://www.amazon.com/Dependency-Injection-NET-Mark-Seemann/dp/1935182501

From someone's Amazon review, this is not an exaggeration:

> The Short Story: This is the best software development book I have ever read. By miles. Or, in deference to Mr. Seeman, in kilometers. Stop. Buy this book. It will change how you think, how you reason, how you sleep at night. See you in a year, we will both be smarter.

Learn Windows PowerShell in a month of lunches is a great start!
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1617294160


That walks you through some of the basics.


Once you feel comfortable using Get-Help and Get-Member, you should be able to slowly work through any problem that you want to solve, by reading documentation on each cmdlet via get-help and analyzing objects with get-member.

Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches

Also, SS64 has a great Index/reference of PS commands.

Another good thing to do is to start searching the web for "how do I $taskName in Powershell."

My apologies if it seems like I was jumping down your throat about these things - I do think that you should spend some time with AD in a testing environment, and studing the specifics of AD (Try the 70-640 study material if you are going 2008 http://www.amazon.com/Self-Paced-Training-Configuring-Directory-Microsoft/dp/0735651930/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422558588&sr=8-1&keywords=70-640).

It is definitely an important topic for you to learn about - just be aware that this is an intermediate to advanced topic that needs to be handled appropriately and not in a "learn as you go" sort of way.

Not really fair to link to a PDF copy of the book. It's a fantastic book and worth purchasing and supporting the author.

It can be purchased on Amazon

https://labgopher.com/ - Get an old server from there if you can bring something like this home and run it occasionally.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/ - Setup a domain, and all that stuff, to simulate roughly the layout of your work, all in VM's.

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ - Use this and do the examples multiple times.

Within the 30-day mark you should know a good amount to get you started.

Download VSCode, use Powershell IDE, also get the preview version of powershell to stay ahead, find out how to do GUI's for powershell for end users, automate things where you have to enumerate and analyze large information, like folders and all their permissions to audit permissions overall. Make scripts that remove unnecessary win10 components via GPO to workstations. Etc...

It's 1100 pages long because the A+'s scope is incredibly wide. You have to be comfortable with all of the objectives, which encompasses roughly every hardware component you would see in a lot of legacy and modern computers and multiple Operating systems and diagnostic tools. Sometimes yeah, he goes into a bit too much detail for the exam itself, but the knowledge is important. For example, his detailing on how the CPU pulls from RAM is a bit over the scope of the exam. But you'll get a better understanding of why he's telling you this as you get further into the field. Plus, knowing so much detail about every little bit of information will make it very, very difficult for you get to questions on the exam you're unfamiliar with.


And as a fair warning if you're planning to make it much further into IT, get ready for a lot more reading and a lot of it will probably be just as much of a slog. One of the fundamental Group Policy Object books is about 900 pages alone.

Learn windows server. It's a great way to move out of the help desk.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/learning/windows-server-certification.aspx

https://www.amazon.ca/70-410-Installing-Configuring-Windows-Server/dp/0735684243/

Start with this:

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=sr_1_3?crid=26462OWKXC9YH&keywords=learn+windows+powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches&qid=1568013284&s=gateway&sprefix=learn+windows+%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-3

Then this:

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-PowerShell-Scripting-Month-Lunches/dp/1617295094/ref=sr_1_4?crid=26462OWKXC9YH&keywords=learn+windows+powershell+in+a+month+of+lunches&qid=1568013284&s=gateway&sprefix=learn+windows+%2Caps%2C231&sr=8-4

And finally this:

https://leanpub.com/powershell-scripting-toolmaking

​

I'd also recommend spinning up a virtual environment with at least 1 server and 2 workstations. Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 Enterprise both have evaluation editions you can download and install for free.

Thanks! I'm going to read Network Warrior because I've heard it has some very useful real-world knowledge. Then onto the CCNP R+S probably using Odom and CBT Nuggets. Thoughts/comments?

Cyberpunk 2020 is a Tabletop Roleplaying game, thus why there are books, for the background, rules, NPC's, etc. The core rule book is what you need to start a game, and often they will release supplements to add to ones campaign, if you have any experience with Dungeons and Dragons that helps to understand.

http://www.amazon.com/Cyberpunk-2020-Roleplaying-Game-Future/dp/0937279137

They are making Cyberpunk 2077 because it appears to be a bit further in the future than the current line of Tabletop games, and after asking about Cyberpunk 2020, people have told me since its old its a bit quite dated, tech in it hasn't caught up to real life. I never got into Cyberpunk 2020, cause we opted to play Shadowrun Tabletop instead when we wanted to play a cyberpunk game.

Edit: For lore you might want to check out http://cyberpunk.wikia.com/

A+ and Net+ and all the other +-certs are entry level. CCNA is entry level, and 70-680 is entry level.

Something to consider is that everyone has certs these days, so the certs you get must make you better than "everyone".

For example, CCNP is a rather high-end cert. You don't see a lot of CVs with this on, because people with this cert only need a Linkedin page, and the offers will come in endless streams.

MCSE is absolutely good to have if you want to go anywhere in a Microsoft environment, though Microsoft doesn't really do high-end certs anymore, so the only thing you can really aim for with an MCSE is an MVP award, but that does take some serious effort.

WCNA is worth some brownie points in the right places.

You should also supplement certs with in-depth knowledge, and recommended practices, for example,

• Windows Internals 7th edition
  
• The Practice of System and Network Administration: V1
  
  I can't really help much with regards to Linux though. It's not really my area.

Yeah Cyberpunk 2077 will be heavily based on the Table top game of Cyberpunk 2020

[Cyberpunk 2020 Rulebook] (https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cyberpunk-Roleplaying-Game-Dark-Future/dp/0937279137/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493541999&sr=8-1&keywords=cyberpunk+2020)

Night City Guide

You can find free copies all over internet though.

Windows Server 2012 Unleashed was good the 2016 version should be out soonish: https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-2012-Unleashed-Morimoto/dp/0672336227

Mastering Windows Server 2012r2 is good, make sure you check for corrections because there are some scripting issues in the original printing: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Windows-Server-2012-R2/dp/1118289420/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1479226853&sr=8-2&keywords=server+2012r2

Windows Server 2012 R2 Administrator Cookbook is good, but not really a beginners book: https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-2012-Administrator-Cookbook/dp/178439307X/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&qid=1479226852&sr=8-12&keywords=windows+server

"how can I learn to script powershell without having the basics for syntaxes"

honestly, i think if you try going this route, you're going to wind up very frustrated. you really ought to start with the basics. you can't just jump straight to the "knowing" part -- have to go through the process of learning before you get there. crawl before you can walk, and all that.

i bought myself a copy of "Learn Powershell in a Month of Lunches" (amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/) and i like it. many people here on /r/sysadmin recommend it, as well. i would start there to build a good foundation. one of the earliest things the book teaches you is how to use powershell's built-in help and how to read error messages and such, which will become extremely helpful when you do get to the point where you start writing scripts.

buy that book, and/or ask your supervisor to buy you a license to a training site like CBT Nuggets or PluralSight. some people prefer videos and narration over books, but find what works for you, and remember to start with the basics and move up from there.

Pluralsight has some good videos for the MCSA Server 2012. If you sign up for Visual Studio Dev Essensials, you can get a free 3 months with Pluralsight.

https://www.visualstudio.com/free-developer-offers/

I should add, if you're going for the MCSA cert, I've heard it's Powershell heavy. You can get started with Powershell with Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290211

I just ordered that, it is supposed to be pretty good.

I think the Powershell in a Month of Lunches series is considered pretty good.

There is a really good book about Dependency Injection in .NET

In regards how to use DI with NHibernate, there is a good article describing just that: Dependency Injection and Unit Of Work using Castle Windsor and NHibernate

What file name format do you use for your ebooks?

Mine is...

Format:
<title><edition><year><isbn><optional famous authors names>.<ext>

Example:
Linux Device Drivers_3rd Ed_2005_9780596005900.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Device-Drivers-Jonathan-Corbet/dp/0596005903/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278407654&sr=1-1

I rarely include the authors name, except for famous or favorite authors.

In recent years, I always use the ISBN-13, but remove all dashes and spaces.

I always use underscores between 'fields' in ALL of my file names to make it easier to parse into a database.

As long as you include the exact ISBN, you can always look up the publisher and author, thus is why I don't include either one in my file names any more.

Learn Windows PowerShell in a Month of Lunches is a pretty popular one and has helped me
https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=dp_ob_title_bk

I encourage you to read this book

this book really opened my eyes to a lot and it goes at it as if you had no idea about IoC containers and dependency injection. it really Is fantastic.

A change in mind is good start. The Inmates are running the asyslum and About Faces both from Alan Cooper are good books.

Referring to Security+ books. I like the Security+ ExamCram (https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-SYO-401-Exam-Cram/dp/0789753340/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1520956323&sr=8-7&keywords=security%2B+401) a lot better than All in One Comptia Security+ (https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Guide-Fourth-SY0-401/dp/0071841245/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1520956323&sr=8-4&keywords=security%2B+401)

I have 3 semesters left so my plan has been to seek an internship next summer closer to graduating. Do you think it's unwise to wait that long? My independent study could be better but I've become proficient with Linux using Arch as my daily driver and reading through The Linux Command Line. I'm also going through The Basics of Hacking and Pentesting which had me set up a "lab". Just finished the recon chapter. Also proficient in Python/Java/C++ ("proficient" might be a bold claim, rust considered).

Maybe if you're Michael Kevin Kearney you could.

I'm currently taking an MCSA course at college and it's abysmal. They're using Testout.com to teach and grade the class. Testout is garbage and there's no context to what I'm reading.

I bought an excellent book to supplement my studies: Mastering Windows Server 2012. I'm also using CBT Nuggets, Udemy, and Microsofts training website.

It's pretty deep stuff. I've never had exposure to servers before.

You're mileage may vary.

The Network Warrior book may be what you're looking for. It's a bit old, yes, but still useful.

They would do you more service buying books like http://www.amazon.com/Certified-Ethical-Hacker-Study-Guide/dp/0470525207 or http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-Donahue/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1451148178&sr=1-1&keywords=network+warrior

But maybe they just don't know ... they see you only "sitting behind that thing they don't understand very well, for hours", you probably never talked about hobbies without it going awry, I can imagine. Not blaming anyone or anything, just saying, this is what usually happens and their reaction is gentle nudge.

Yes. CompTIA is a very reputable certification. I also think this book would be a good companion.

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861

Read here: http://www.advancedlinuxprogramming.com/


Program. Then read here: http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Kernel-Development-3rd-Edition/dp/0672329468


Program some more. Then maybe read here: http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Device-Drivers-3rd-Edition/dp/0596005903


And program some more. Yes, I know two of the links are to amazon. I'm sure if you look real hard you can find other formats.

I would look into completing the triad of A+, Security+, and Network+ long term.

Here is a book that might help you on your way and is appropriately named, plus one other book I like

https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-SysAdmin-Handbook-Primer-Professionals/dp/1484218167/ref=pd_sbs_14_1/157-3685118-2307823?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1484218167&pd_rd_r=YGE1VXYEB8868B4ZE438&pd_rd_w=UiuwT&pd_rd_wg=gGWFI&psc=1&refRID=YGE1VXYEB8868B4ZE438

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Everything-Need-Wasnt/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1484232367&sr=1-1&keywords=network+warrior

Powershell in a month of lunches by Don Jones...

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617290211/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1311721510&sr=8-1

I'm a big fan of Don Jones... That's a really good intro book imho.

Honestly, apply for everything. Shoot for those two and help desk. You can sort of get in the door with call center work, but let's call that a last ditch effort.


For learning about the field, Network Warrior is pretty much the bible of generalized network "stuff". It's fairly vendor independent and covers a lot of things that are off the beaten path (load balancers and such).

Cisco's CCENT book and the above one will supplement each other well.

I can't really speak to the server side these days. I've been over in Networking for a while...

The book "Learn PowerShell in a month of lunches" is a great first read!

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160/ref=asc_df_1617294160/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4435694643250366932&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002018&hvtargid=pla-406163967273&psc=1&tag=&ref=&adgrpid=62820903995&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvadid=312091457223&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=4435694643250366932&hvqmt=&hvdev=c&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9002018&hvtargid=pla-406163967273

I'm in the same boat as you. I just passed last Thursday with a 907 - must be a popular score.

I've heard several people recommend Gary Donahue's Network Warrior as a bridge between the CCNA and studying for the CCNP. I haven't yet checked it out myself, but I'm strongly considering picking up a copy.

As many other users have stated, it really sounds like you're dealing with a bunch of dinosaurs. For a guide on getting things right, I wholeheartedly recommend Jeremy Moskowitz's group policy book. http://www.amazon.com/Group-Policy-Fundamentals-Security-Managed/dp/1118289404 (you can get a taste on google books too)

Did you base your studying around the exam objectives? https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/learning/exam-70-410.aspx


In my experience with MS exams they will stick to the objectives they outline. The kicker of course, is that you have to be prepared to answer the MS way. I'd highly recommend buying their study material so that you can get an idea of the way they expect you to answer.

https://www.amazon.com/Training-Installing-Configuring-Windows-Microsoft/dp/0735684332/ref=sr_1_8?keywords=70-410&qid=1567086196&s=gateway&sr=8-8


https://www.amazon.com/70-410-Installing-Configuring-Windows-Server/dp/0735684243/ref=sr_1_7?keywords=70-410&qid=1567086285&s=gateway&sr=8-7

Im currently going through my CCNA, Iv found the Sybex book to be the best, It was also suggested to me by a few co-workers who are already CCNA Holders.

Heres the one im using:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CCNA-Certified-Network-Associate-640-802/dp/0470901071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325261519&sr=8-1

EDIT.
Also, get yourself a copy of GNS3, if you need the IOS's give me a shout.

These are going to be your best goddamn friends for the next few months:

https://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/
/r/sysadmin
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0470249846/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118289420/
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/hh215959.aspx

For a more practical guide I think this is the best book:

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861

There are two main resources that you will need in order to learn PowerShell; the first is PowerShell in a Month of Lunches (there's a newer version coming soon) and the second is access to people who know PowerShell and can help you, like /r/powershell for example.

Have you tried just jumping into power shell? power shell in a month of lunches is a great place to start.

Check out Powershell in a Month of Lunches

https://www.amazon.com/Learn-Windows-PowerShell-Month-Lunches/dp/1617294160

Great starter for getting into powershell

I just read the majority of this: Group Policy Fundamentals... - thought it was great. It filled in a lot of little gaps in knowledge I had.

> I have my A+ cert
>
>they recommended a segmented network. and I had to google what that even was.
>
>I am the "IT Guy" The previous "IT Guy" got me this job

You need to start reading cbks right now in all your free time. Even if you don't take the cert exams for the cbks below, it is knowledge you need to know asap.

​

I suggest these (in order):

​

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Certification-Seventh-N10-007/dp/1260122387/ref=sr_1_3

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Server-Certification-Guide-SK0-004/dp/125983803X/ref=sr_1_1

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Complete-Study-Guide/dp/111885991X/ref=sr_1_4

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-PowerShell-Cookbook-Scripting-Microsofts/dp/1449320686/ref=pd_sbs_14_5/143-0552349-3403540

https://www.amazon.com/Windows-Server-Complete-Study-Guide/dp/1119359147/ref=sr_1_3

https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Guide-Fifth-SY0-501/dp/1260019322/ref=sr_1_4

I'm going for the 2016 version, but this is the same company I used for my 2016 books. They were quite helpful along with setting up a test lab..

https://www.amazon.com/70-410-Installing-Configuring-Windows-Server/dp/0735684243/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1520535651&sr=8-3&keywords=mcsa+windows+server+2012+r2

It’s gonna be hard to give you much without picking a specific OS—details can vary widely even within a single OS family line—but an OS book is probably a good place to start. Tanenbaum’s book is the go-to.

Alternatively, there are books on specific techniques like garbage collection, or books more generally on programming for UNIX/POSIX/Linux or Windows (via Win16/32/64 API, not the six-mile-high shitheap piled atop), which would tell you some about how memory management works in down at least to whatever abstract hardware interface the kernel uses.

Thanks ;). Not so skilled on that and my advice might be misleading; though I got a background in cs:This would be my suggestion for someone beginning.

• Understanding how comp works. Books: Code and Element of computing systems -> Video NandToTetris
  
• Programming( web programming(HTML/Javascript/PHP etc),C, bash, Python,(other script lang e.g perl, ruby etc) and assembly. In that order and database(e.g msql)
  
• Networking. book Computer Networking: A Top Down Approach. video Computer Networks by David Wetherall. Also some CCNA books
  
• How Linux works, Windows internals, and Modern Operating Sytems
  
• Cryptography by Christof Paar and cryptopal challenges
  
• Computer System Security
  
• Any other materials related to infosec. look at HowToHack resources on the sidebar. Also opensec
  
• Play some CTF e.g OverTheWire, smashthestack
  You can also search for those books pdf by using google hacks eg filetype:pdf "title of the book here" or intitle:index.of "title of the book here"

Network warrior is a good one for real-life knowledge for people who are somewhat above CCNA level knowledge. Might be a bit advanced if you are new to networking.

https://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-Donahue/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1466962114&sr=8-1&keywords=network+warrior

OP: This book is cisco-centric, but there's tons of good networking information in there. I bought it because I was in the same situation as you and it helped a lot, even though I ended up doing more system work than network work. Check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Network-Warrior-Gary-A-Donahue/dp/1449387861/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1398779258&sr=8-1&keywords=network+warrior

First, check out Don't Make Me Think! by Steve Krug. It's an easy read and invaluable.

If you really like that approach then you should think about going into Interaction Design (aka usability, user-centered design, UX design, information architecture, etc.). I've been doing it for about 11 years and have only recently gotten into coding. Usually I produce wireframes and specs for the coders, do user research, and conduct usability tests. There nothing quite like watching someone trying to use your design and doing something completely different from what you expected.

I haven't kept up with some of the latest books out there, but some of my formative ones are:

• The Design of Everyday Things, Donald Norman
  
  
• Contextual Design, Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt
  
  
• User and Task Analysis for Interface Design, Ginny Redish and Joann Hackos
  
  
• Letting Go of the Words, Ginny Redish
  
  
• About Face, Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, and David Cronin
  
  
• The Inmates are Running the Asylum, Alan Cooper

This post is Cisco-centric.

Books:

http://www.amazon.com/Interconnections-Bridges-Switches-Internetworking-Protocols/dp/0201634481/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318854135&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.com/Cisco-Certified-Network-Associate-640-802/dp/0470901071/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1318854213&sr=8-1

Website of someone I know and I'm very impressed by:

http://www.stubarea.net/workbooks/cisco/ccna/

Network Warrior is an O'Reilly book that's excellent for real world stuff.